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

January Midday Program

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.

This is a Zoom only program, so no need to worry about the weather forecast. Plus, don’t tell them, but we left the Morlocks off the invite list. So register and reserve your seat today!

Please forward this notice to anyone who may find it of interest.

Even if you can’t attend at the scheduled time, if you’re interested, please register. After the program, we’ll send an email to all registrants, asking if you’d like a link to the complete recording. That way you can see the program even if you couldn’t attend live, ran into technical issues, or simply wanted to watch it again.