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WORK TITLE: Not Free, Not for All
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1954
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://ischool.arizona.edu/users/cheryl-knott * http://www.sharpweb.org/sharpnews/2017/02/24/cheryl-knott-not-free-not-for-all-public-libraries-in-the-age-of-jim-crow/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2015057478
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2015057478
HEADING: Knott, Cheryl, 1954-
000 00473nz a2200121n 450
001 9969672
005 20150923160241.0
008 150923n| azannaabn |n aaa
010 __ |a n 2015057478
040 __ |a DLC |b eng |e rda |c DLC
046 __ |f 1954-02-11 |2 edtf
100 1_ |a Knott, Cheryl, |d 1954-
670 __ |a Not free, not for all, 2015: |b ECIP t.p. (Cheryl Knott) data view (Cheryl Knott; associate professor in the School of Information at the University of Arizona, Tucson; birth date: Feb. 11, 1954)
PERSONAL
Born February 11, 1954.
EDUCATION:University of Texas, Austin, Ph.D., 1996.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Academic and librarian. Has worked as an academic librarian in MI and TX; University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, associate professor, 2001–.
AWARDS:Methodology Paper Competition winner, Association for Library and Information Science Education; Justin Winsor Prize, Library History Round Table of the American Library Association; Lillian Smith Book Award and Eliza Atkins Gleason Book Award, both for Not Free, Not for All.
WRITINGS
Contributor to academic journals, including Library Trends, Reference Librarian, Knowledge Organization, the Journal of Government Information, the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Information Society, and Library Quarterly.
SIDELIGHTS
Cheryl Knott is an academic. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Austin, in 1996 and worked as an academic librarian in Michigan and Texas. Knott began working at the University of Arizona in 2001, eventually becoming an associate professor. Her research interests include the history of public libraries, the segregation of public libraries, and the history of print culture in the environmental movement. Knott has published in a number of academic journals, including Library Trends, Reference Librarian, Knowledge Organization, the Journal of Government Information, the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Information Society, and Library Quarterly.
Knott published Not Free, Not for All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow in 2015. The account received both the Lillian Smith Book Award and the Eliza Atkins Gleason Book Award. The account looks into the way public libraries became more welcoming to the general public by renovating their internal infrastructure and creating spaces for general interest and children. This open period did not, however, extend to African Americans, who were restricted or refused outright by librarians and the institutions they represented during the era of Jim Crow laws. Knott challenges histories on public libraries in the United States by arguing that their “free to all” period was, in fact, quite the opposite. The book highlights discriminatory policies and systemic racism and also the way in which white, middle-class women created public libraries as white spaces. Knott also describes the segregated public library collections and services that African-Americans designed and how many public libraries were slow to dismantle this system in the 1950s and 1960s when public facilities were ordered to desegregate.
Writing in the Journal of Southern History, Gordon K. Mantler suggested that “perhaps the book’s most satisfying moments reflect ‘African American agency in both the creation of Jim Crow libraries and their demise’ (p. 4). Sprinkled throughout Knott’s analysis are brief stories of African Americans who acted.” Mantler cautioned, though, that “the book may have limited utility for those most interested in the freedom struggle because there are not enough of these accounts.” Nevertheless, Mantler labeled the account “an important contribution” to literature on the Jim Crow era.
Reviewing the book in Choice, D. Pan “recommended” Not Free, Not for All, calling it “an important reinterpretation of public-library collections and services for African Americans in the South during the Jim Crow era.” In a review in Information & Culture: A Journal of History, Patrick M. Valentine summarized that “studies on black use of public libraries have advanced far in recent decades. More remains to be done in examining the role of small rural libraries and especially of measuring library impact on the lives of individuals, but Cheryl Knott has shown the way forward in a sophisticated and comprehensive work written with care and charm.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, October 1, 2016, D. Pan, review of Not Free, Not for All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow, p. 195.
Information & Culture: A Journal of History, 2016, Patrick M. Valentine, review of Not Free, Not for All.
Journal of American Culture, 2017, Martin J. Manning, review of Not Free, Not for All, p. 290.
Journal of American History, 2017, Lawrence Jackson, review of Not Free, Not for All, pp. 226-227.
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2017, Kenneth W. Goings, review of Not Free, Not for All, p. 432-433.
Journal of Southern History, May 1, 2017, Gordon K. Mantler, review of Not Free, Not for All, p. 452.
ONLINE
ORCID, https://orcid.org/ (November 19, 2017), author profile.
University of Arizona Website, https://www.arizona.edu/ (November 19, 2017), author profile.
University of Massachusetts Press Website, https://www.umass.edu/umpress/ (June 27, 2016), “Cheryl Knott Honored with Two Book Awards.”
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Cheryl Knott
About Cheryl Knott
Cheryl Knott publishes in the area of information access broadly construed. Her book, Find the Information You Need! https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442262478/Find-the-Information-You-Need!-Resources-and-Techniques-for-Making-Decisions-Solving-Problems-and-Answering-Questions (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), provides an introduction to online searching. She is also the author of Not Free, Not for All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow (University of Massachusetts Press, 2015), winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award and the Eliza Atkins Gleason Book Award. She is a recipient of the Justin Winsor Prize sponsored by the Library History Round Table of the American Library Association and winner of the Methodology Paper Competition of the Association for Library and Information Science Education. External funding for her research has come from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library Foundation, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and the American Philosophical Society. With ten years of experience as an academic librarian at the Universities of Michigan and Texas, she teaches undergraduate and graduate sections of online searching and government information, and she developed and teaches the undergraduate eSociety course, "Hacking and Open Source Culture."
Areas of Study
History of Public Libraries
Information Access
Scholarly Communication
Research Interests
Associate Professor Cheryl Knott has increased the profession’s understanding of information access and its barriers through her publications on the history of racially segregated public libraries and the work of African American librarians and educators. Her newest research explores the history of the environmental movement's print culture.
Selected Publications
Research profile, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7299-2227
Find the Information You Need!, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016;
“Publication and Reception of The Southern Negro and the Public Library,” 51-78 in Race, Ethnicity and Publishing in America. Editor Cécile Cottenet. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014;
"What a Book Can (and Can't) Do: Stewart Udall's The Quiet Crisis," 201-222 in Science in Print. Editors Rima D. Apple, Greg Downey, and Stephen Vaughn. University of Wisconsin Press, 2012
Cheryl Knott's picture
Contact Information
Cheryl Knott
Associate Professor, School of Information
Email: cherylknott@email.arizona.edu
Telephone: 520-621-3565
Courses Taught
Government Information
Online Searching
Hacking and Open Source Culture
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11/12/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1510528939532 1/1
Print Marked Items
Untold Stories: Civil Rights, Libraries, and
Black Librarianship
Stephen L. Hupp
Library Journal.
123.20 (Dec. 1998): p164.
COPYRIGHT 1998 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Untold Stories: Civil Rights, Libraries, and Black Librarianship.
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign GSLIS Pubns. Office, 501 E. Daniel St., Champaign, IL 618201; 217-333-
1359. 1998. c.210p, ed. by John Mark Tucker. ISBN 0-87845-104-8. pap. $27.
This fine collection of 15 essays provides original insights into the use of books and libraries by African Americans
since the 19th century. Written by librarians, scholars, and activists, seven chapters first appeared as part of the
Library History Round Table's (LHRT) program at the 1994 American Library Association annual conference.
Particularly good are the two sections by Edward G. Holly and Charles Churchwell describing the integration of the
University of Houston's library staff in 1967. Also, Donald G. Davis and Cheryl Knott Malone's study of libraries'
role in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer project and Marilyn H. Pettit's section on New York City Sunday
school libraries in the 19th century are excellent. Complementing the Handbook of Black Librarianship (1977) and
In Our Own Voices: The Changing Face of Librarianship (Scarecrow, 1996), this is highly recommended to all
librarians interested in both library and African American history.--Stephen L. Hupp, Swedenborg Memorial Lib.,
Urbana Univ., OH
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hupp, Stephen L. "Untold Stories: Civil Rights, Libraries, and Black Librarianship." Library Journal, Dec. 1998, p.
164. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA53501533&it=r&asid=3a6c030cd0cc552ef8670cf0bfbdb2ae.
Accessed 12 Nov. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A53501533