id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
crl-12829	Dain, Phyllis	Public Libraries as Culture and Social Centers: The Origin of the Concept (Book Review)	1976	2	.pdf	application/pdf	1408	62	54	$6.00. (LC 74-8420) (ISBN 0-8108-07 38-6) David W. Davies, long an academic li- brarian and a historian and typophile as well, here turns a critical, somewhat ironi- cal eye on the relationship between goals and programs of public libraries in Great Britain and North America. Davies argues that public libraries, founded by nineteenth-century upper- and middle-class philanthropists convinced of the perfectibility of humankind, eager to uplift the masses, and persuaded that read- ing was intrinsically virtuous and refining, were, like other educational and cultural institutions, started by similar people and for similar re~sons (lyceums, athenaeums, literary and scientific societies, mechanics' institutes), paternalistic and elitist.	cache/crl-12829.pdf	txt/crl-12829.txt