libraries distributed along the line

greenspun.com : LUSENET : ACL and SAL Railroads Historical Society : One Thread

At the turn of the century a woman in Georgia named Mrs. E.B. Heard organized and distributed libraries of 50 to 100 volumes to towns along the rail road for the benefit of employees and their families. The books were used by everyone in the town, not just the RR employees. Mrs. Heard was affiliated with the Georgia Federation of Women's Clubs and the work was continued by her daughter. The distribution point was her plantation, Rose Hill. Andrew Carnegie may have given some funds to support the work. I am interested in finding out anything I can about this )especially anything about Mrs. Heard) for research I am doing on the role of women's clubs in the development of public libraries. Not the usual kind of question, but maybe someone out there knows something about this.....? Thanks for any information.

-- Paula D. Watson (pdwatson@uiuc.edu), July 31, 1999

Answers

I'll check and see if there is anything in our library that will be of help. Assume you have already explored all the links that fan out from the General Federation of Woman's Clubs web site and have probably already looked at Elizabeth Stone and Jean Preer's work in Public Libraries, "Empowerment for Libraries and Literature" Oct., 1989. Good luck. . .and if you find anything, I hope you can post some info and sources here on the forum.

-- Malcolm Campbell (collections@srmduluth.org), August 11, 1999.

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