Jeremy Dibbell on The Libraries of Early America: Bringing Historical Libraries to Life

Tell the truth. When you get a look at someone’s library, you do more than consider the shelving units and bookends. You take a careful look at the books themselves. Just what does this person read? Collect? Display?

Now our guest, Jeremy Dibbell is going to nudge H.G. Wells aside, commandeer The Time Machine and take us into a fascinating journey through the American past to consider the libraries of the early colonial period through 1800.

What was on Myles Standish’s shelf? Ben Franklin’s? Phyllis Wheatley Peters’? John Adams’? And more?

He’ll be drawing on the latest from The Libraries of Early America project (LibraryThing.com) to introduce us to the tastes and collections of the famous and the obscure. Who shelved guilty pleasures? How-To manuals? Theological works? Scientific treatises?

Jeremy Dibbell serves as Special Collections Librarian at Binghamton University. A member of the American Antiquarian Society, he has been director of communications and outreach at Rare Book School, a reference librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and has been librarian for social media and rare books at LibraryThing.

To register: https://caxtonclub.org/event-6465196/Registration