Southern Librarianship and the Culture of Resentment

Abstract

The development of library service in the southern states occurred in a supposedly reconciliatory period of American history following the Civil War, but the reforms of Reconstruction, the indigenous remnants of "southern culture," and feelings of isolation from larger professional affairs bred dissent and feelings of estrangement between natives and outsiders. This article relates "the southern problem" to early key events in southern library development and current fractures in American cultural politics.