Enfilade

From the University of Liverpool:

Dr Mark Towsey has been awarded £36,225 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to develop a two-year international research network on Community Libraries: Connecting Readers in the Atlantic World, 1650-1850. Together with his partners at Loyola University Chicago, the Newberry Library (Chicago), and the Dr Williams’s Library (London), Mark will host three workshops on the cultural history of libraries in the long eighteenth century, seeking to establish a dynamic, longer-lasting, multi- and interdisciplinary research forum to investigate the role of libraries in shaping communities in the past.

The first event, to be held at the Liverpool Athenaeum Library in August 2013 or January 2014 will explore the role of libraries in the Atlantic World; the second, to be held in Chicago in June 2014, will workshop the use of digital technologies in deepening our understanding of historic reading communities and the social impact of the printed word; the third, to be held in London in January 2015, will assess the role of libraries in community formation, asking whether historical models of library provision and administration can be adapted to meet the challenges faced by community libraries in the digital age, and in an age of financial austerity.

Further information on the network, its aims and objectives, and its planned activities, will soon be found on the History department’s research projects webpage. If you would like to find out more about the network, or would like to take part, please contact the project leader on Towsey@liv.ac.uk.