'Do what you can': Creating an institution, the Ladies' Library Associations in Michigan, 1852-1900 (Michigan)

This study seeks to recover the historical record of the Ladies' Library Association in Michigan. It focuses on institution building activities as well as the literacy and reading practices of Ladies' Library Associations. I base this study primarily upon records of the Kalamazoo, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Galesburg L.L.A.'s. Records include minutes of board meetings, annual meetings and study groups and are supplemented with local newspaper articles.; I examine organizational principles found in constitutions, by-laws and mission statements in the second chapter. The chapter focuses on how women used the state laws to gain status and power for the libraries before and after the Civil War. Through source materials that include contemporary and county histories, I examine what the L.L.A. meant to the women who formed them and to the community where they were located.; In the next two chapters I explore public and private reading practices. Reading circles and study groups in Kalamazoo are examined in chapter three. Topics of study, the format of meetings and the educational opportunities provided for members are discussed. The dynamic of gender is in the discussion of the Reading Circle because this group allowed males to participate.; Chapter four investigates what women actually purchased and read. By examining thirteen library catalogs, the popular genres and authors between 1850 and 1902 can be determined. Minutes of the associations reveal the policies and practices for purchasing books as well as the requests made by readers for more fictional works and the ways that the women met the demand, while still providing high quality reading matter. By compiling circulation statistics in Galesburg, Michigan from 1877–1880 I examine what women actually checked out and presumably read.; Finally, I analyze the fundraising efforts and physical spaces where the women met. These activities positioned women as leaders in the community and made the L.L.A.'s more visible. Lecture courses, plays and social events were all popular. The records of the Ann Arbor association provide details about the problems connected to building a library.