Library Trends 56 (3) Winter 2008: Alternative Print Culture: Social History and Libraries

Abstract

Any collection of information materials preserved through the generations will inevitably influence how we interpret the past. Conversely, the absence of information material silences historical voices, which are then lost to history. That really was the premise grounding my decision to ask Jim Danky in the fall of 2005 how he felt about being sent into retirement in 2007 with a symposium in Madison, Wisconsin, that assessed the influence of the collections he had amassed at that venerable institution, the Wisconsin Historical Society, where he had been employed since 1973. Together, Jim and I [Wayne A. Wiegand] crafted a plan for the symposium that would be entitled "Alternative Print Culture: Social History and Libraries." On the one hand it would consist of presentations addressing areas of studies influenced by the collections Jim had put together as Newspapers and Periodicals Librarian at the Society, including women's studies, African American history, Native American studies, radical and labor history, zines, and the periodicals and serials of the radical left and right. On the other hand, two essays would evaluate the influence of Jim’s own scholarly writings, and the Center for Print Culture History in Modern America, a joint project of the Wisconsin Historical Society and the University of Wisconsin–Madison that he helped establish and then codirect with me between 1992 and 2002, and after I left Madison in January 2003, he directed himself until October 2006, when Christine Pawley took over as his successor. This volume of Library Trends constitutes the proceedings of that symposium.