Books, Buildings and Social Engineering: Early Public Libraries in Britain from Past to Present

In an age when public libraries are frantically divesting themselves of their bookish image, spending heavily on hardware and software, and desperately seeking to be socially relevant, it was a pleasure to step back into the past world of library economy, Andrew Carnegie, and debates over “open access” (old style): a chance to see how far we have come and put the present in a context. Not that the Past was a cosy world: the fight to establish credibility, to build buildings to be proud of, and to agree “best practice”, was as hard and as bitter as it ever...