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And I'm Richard when Dorothy the director and librarian of the Boston Athenaeum and it's my pleasure to welcome you to the second of two noontime events devoted to. Essays presentations based on essays about the Boston Athenaeum that will appear in our final bicentennial publication entitled The Boss Nathanael bicentennial essays. We wanted to let. Our members and the members of the staff here have a kind of early version of what we have in store for you in a few months time. Well the two talks today are going to be quite different. The first chronicles what we've been doing in the last five years and looks forward in terms of the educational aspect. Of the Athenaeum mission at the current time and the second talk is going to look backwards to one of the most intriguing and provocative. Moments in the

athenæum history. We're going to begin with John Brereton who's going to talk about. The. Calderwood writing initiative which he served as executive director of for the past four years. John Britton came to us. From Brandeis University where he was director of writing programs and he had previously held a similar position at the University of Massachusetts Boston where he was also a professor of English. John Britton has been teaching a writing course at Harvard and he's publish wildly that widely not wildly widely. Well sometimes we wish it were a little wilder John in the fields of rhetoric and composition including two important anthologies that have been issued just in the in the past year and a half a living literature which was published by Longman in 2007.

And then the Norton reader the 12th edition of which he is the coeditor and it came out earlier this year so please join me in a welcoming and acknowledging John Burton. Thank you. Thank you very much Richard. The Calderwood writing initiative is the inspiration and the last wish of a dying man. Stan Calderwood some of you may have known him Richard did was a proprietor of the Boston Athenaeum. He grew up in Colorado went to the University of Colorado and was a journalist for a number of years then went went to work at the Polaroid Corp. in Boston and realized he was not going to become president of Polaroid as long as Mr. Land was still in charge. So his neighbor Julia Child in Cambridge told him he should look at this television station WGBH as a place to where his talents might be well used. And he went to WGBH as the

head of the station and began a masterpiece theater there. He left and very very quickly after that and became head of a investment firm in downtown Boston did very very well there and retired with with a large fortune and devoted his the room the remainder of his life to good works he endowed a house at the McDowell colony in New Hampshire. He endowed the Calderwood pavilion of the Huntington theater. He endowed the head of the at the names position. Richard is the Stanford called the word librarian and director. I endowed professorship at Boston College. So he. It's a name that is extremely well known in Boston philanthropic circles. He was very interested in writing and he looked for a way to. Spend some of his money on improving the quality of writing

in New England in the United States. And one of the things that he decided to do with that with his money was to endow. The Calderwood writing Initiative at the Boston Athenaeum. He died before it began. So this is a there was a transitional group of scholars and Richard went off was the head of this group that devised the program for the Calderwood writing initiative. And since we've begun we I think have succeeded and lived up to Stan calls it was expectations and I'll go over some of the kinds of things we do at the cold writing initiative to give you a sense of the scope of the operation I won't touch on everything we do but I'll cover the main ideas the main the main program matic elements of it. We. Start writing centers in high schools and some colleges as well. A writing center is a relatively new

invention in how you teach people to write. An average teacher has 100 students and if the teacher gives somebody a paper target gives everybody a paper to write. It's almost like a punish lesson for the teacher reading all of those papers. And if you spend more than five minutes on a paper you're going to be spending hours on the on those papers. The writing center allows students to try out drafts to try out different versions of the paper before it gets to the teacher. So the writing is much improved. And for many years writing centers have been operating in colleges. Now we're spending money on starting them up in high schools and we started for writing centers which in a couple of thousand Boston city students go to Boston Cambridge students was taught in one of the Snowdon international school that was our first. Prospect Hill Academy in Cambridge and then Hyde Park Wright high school and West Roxbury High School.

What we do is. Sponsor a magazine a literary magazine because we don't want a writing center to be seen as a place of remediation only we want to be seen as a site for writing. We're trying to create a culture of writing in the school. And we have a literary magazine this is the one from Snowden. This is the one from Prospect Hill Academy. Each writing center gets college student tutors. We have so many college students in Boston why not make use of them and bring them into the high schools. It's a literary magazine with a publication party. So it snowed in school for instance we had last year's publication but it had you know Diaz come and talk to the students just before we want to feel it's a prize for writing. And he was terrific with the students. Now we have faculty development in teaching writing that is we have a master teacher who usually works with the teachers in the school and then we supply a paid director. The results have been dramatic. At the Snowdon school for instance a real inner city school.

The CAS tests from 77 percent pass rate in 2002 2003. Snowden moved to a ninety nine percent pass rate in 2007 2008 and we started right after 2003 and 2002 2003 only 36 percent of Snowden students were rated as advanced or proficiency in 2007 2008 53 percent achieve this ranking. And the the variable was the call toward money spent on improving the quality of writing at the school. So we're extremely pleased with the results at the Snowdon international school. A second element of the called good writing initiative is what we call research and development. We sponsor research into the teaching of writing and we sponsor a faculty development so we sponsor a program called teachers as writers bringing teachers into the Athenaeum. These are these are teachers

here from from one of the summer programs. We welcome Boston area writing teachers each summer to work closely with a master teacher on pedagogy and on their own writing projects. Two books and numerous articles have resulted from these seminars and evaluations have been superb. I was teachers praising the Athenaeum as a setting for the seminar. Some teachers are a little bit intimidated by the athenæum at first but then they become very comfortable with it. They work upstairs in the trustee's room and the Master Teacher was here for two weeks and then during the school year they meet once a month on a Saturday morning to work on their writing and the writing has just has become very very impressive. Not every teacher has published his or her writing but many have been articles in conference presentations and as I say two books have resulted on the back to the other parts of research and development. We sponsored

a research study at Bristol community college. We were. Puzzled by the lack of attention to community colleges more than half. Of American students who went to higher education start in a community college and nobody had done a study of what community college writers were like. And so we spoke to Howat in Bergen J.P. Nadeau at Bristol Community College down in Fall River. And ask them if they would undertake a study giving a snapshot of what the community college writing student was like. And they they've done that they spent a year doing that. Collecting data from teachers and from the students themselves and they've just signed a contract to have the the study published by studies in writing and rhetoric which is a prestigious publication outlook published by Southern Illinois University Press. And we expect that will be circulated widely. Howard and JP gave a talk about this particular project at the conference on college

composition and communication last year in New Orleans and it was extremely well attended by community college teachers who had frequently felt underappreciated in the in such a conference. Project connect is a program that we that we work with teachers at for southeastern Massachusetts colleges University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. Massasoit Community College Bristol community college. And. Leaving out the Fourth o of Bridgewater State College trying to get their standard is in line with each other because many students transfer from those two community colleges to the five to four year colleges. And how can the teachers at the four year colleges be sure that the two year college teaching has brought the students up to a certain level. So they spent a lot of time looking at the papers of the students at the all

four schools and working out a common set of standards. And the result has been terrific there's a lot more cooperation among those four schools now finally. On research and development we sponsored the called award conversations. And this took place in the state of Maine. We felt that there was a real gap between high school teachers and college teachers high school teachers would always be saying wait till you get to college you'll find out. And college teachers will be saying why did you people teach them in high school. And that's a gap that's been around for a hundred fifty years I can show you reports from Harvard in the 1860s about that particular gap. And with with college professors telling high school teachers you didn't do a good enough job. We got the idea was to get high school teachers and college teachers together all over the state of Maine so we sponsored a series of dinners and they were like seven dinners a what people would be invited high school writing teachers and college writing teachers would be invited there where they would

name tags without an agenda find college listed underneath and they would have some reading to do in advance and they would talk about issues of common concern. And these were taped and they were took notes on these and there they'll be published in a book. And when I explain this to people all over the country they are fascinated by this idea. We're the only people in the country who are actually getting high school teachers and college writing teachers together to talk about that. And once that book is out I think it will serve as a stimulus for other teachers to supposed Calderwood conversations of their own I've already had some interest shown by somebody in the state of New Hampshire for instance about sponsoring a program like that. And the program doesn't cost much it costs like $30000 to get all these people together to pay for the food and to hire some graduate students and to pay for the director of the program. So.

That's one of our. These are this is some of the results. The Bristol Community College report has been turned into a monograph project Connect has published its guidelines. And the director of the Calderwood conversations who was at the University of Maine at Farmington has gone on to become the director of Composition at Dartmouth. We we also realize that we're sponsoring people that it's not just a curriculum that we're trying to build but we're talking about people's careers and we're investing in people. And it turns out that we've invested in some absolutely terrific people people who have gone on to exceed our expectations. Another thing we've done is sponsored Writers Workshop a very small grant to publish the work. The writing of students in the city of Boston who participated in the Boston writing project summer program for the last 20 years. And Nancy O'Malley who teaches at the Latin School has collected their work. And. She wants to publish it. And so we look for a way to help her publish it.

And for a very small amount of money this book this will be published and the work is just terrific. The work of this Boston city students. And the third area the large area that I want to talk about is community engagement. We are. The education and community engagement part of the Athenaeum. We sponsor letters about literature which is the Massachusetts branch of the Library of Congress as an initiative to get kids in the schools to write to their favorite author about a book that they like and so people write to Stephen King they write to Shel Silverstein. They write to Louisa May Alcott to be alive to it to get to be the recipient of one of these letters. And. We have thousands of entries from all over the state of Massachusetts and the best letters are chosen by a group of readers including myself I I get to be one of the judges and we present

prizes to the winners at the statehouse in that great hall of flags and the teachers come. The parents come. It's a wonderful celebration and those who have been there will will agree that it's such a great feeling to sponsor. A program that gets kids writing on their own. They don't have to submit this but we want it we take pictures of the teachers or take pictures of the parents. It's a fine thing to do. We also sponsor the annual Calderwood lecture and this is this is a right here as a matter of fact in this very spot. That's Gerald Graff and Cathy Burton's team graph. We invest in people. This is Jerry graft. Two years ago now Jerry Graff is the head of the Modern Language Association. So we got him on the way up. And if you were here for that lecture you recognize the kind of quality that they they provide it. We also sponsor. Well let me go back to Boston.

5:52 is 86 Palencia is the home of Dave Eggers drop in tutoring center. It's in the Mission District in San Francisco and. It's a storefront that looks like it sells pirate goods. And you go in and you can see telescopes at eye patches and then right behind it is a a large drop in tutoring center. You go through a little door and there are desks computers and volunteer tutors ready to work with the kids who stop by. And it's been remarkably successful there. There's a branch in Brooklyn there's a branch in Chicago. There's a branch in L.A. and we brought them to Boston. I went out to visit it ages six and was was very impressed. And so I said maybe you can come to Boston and so we gave them a three year grant to to bring it to six to Boston. And they've come and. They've gotten some very good publicity too this is this is the director of Aid to 610 Johnson

standing in front of the offices that they two Six's rented in Eggleston Square. And there's this is their website. They get to tutors volunteer ing to work for free to work with these kids. Rather remarkable. We've also sponsored teen voices which is a magazine published for 15 16 year old girls right down on Summer Street. We're giving them two grants and then we sponsor the Memoir Project and Memoir Project is. This is a picture a page from the Memoir Project taking elderly folks from the city of Boston and asking them to talk about their lives. And they publish we published a book called Born before plastic. This is run by the Grub Street which is the writer's workshop down the street from us connected to Emerson College and we given them money to train workshop leaders.

And this book has been published by the city of Boston. And they have their stores in the north and from Roxbury and from South Boston. There's another series of memoirs coming and that will be published as well. The writers of them at the in the memoir project were at the publication party of the book before plastic. And there they were sitting down in a Borders bookshop signing their individual contributions and then actually selling them to the visitors. It was a terrific evening. These are the results of the community engagement. We can point to the letters about literature celebration. We've had a national winner somebody from Fitchburg Massachusetts was one of the National winners in the letters about literature contest 5:52 is now a presence on the Boston writing scene this morning before plastic appeared. We get great publicity from the annual called the lecture and teen forces has improved writing instruction.

This is a picture from look at the Snowden Calderwood writing center. There's that they're online now with a blog. And we talk about building a culture a writing at at institutions. It's an uphill battle believe me in this world where students are watching TV all the time sitting in front of a computer. Trying to encourage the written word. It is a fight all the time. At the same time many kids are. Text messaging blogging writing stuff that's not sponsored by schools and we'd like to think about trying to incorporate some of that stuff into our work. But we believe in publication. We believe in sponsoring actual print journals print magazines and so we try to get every one of our grants to actually publish something. And so we have amassed quite a collection of quite a variety of different kinds of publications.

Well that's a bit of an overview of what Calderwood does we also do some work in colleges. We work with some other high schools. But I think I've given you the main thrust of what we do in was called away. And we'll talk about we'll have some time for questions afterwards. OK. Luhan. And set the stage for our second. Talk this afternoon which is by Catherine Wolfe. And she's going to take us back to a very testy period in the 1850s indeed back to the 1840s I imagine when there was both a debate within the Athenaeum and throughout Boston about whether this library which had just moved into this building should in fact become the Boston Public Library. We all know the result of that but in fact it was a very very difficult

moment or I should release a series of moments in Boston Cultural History. Katherine Wolf is an independent scholar who received her Ph.D. in American history and literature from Boston University. She's written for The New York Times and for Salon and her dissertation. It will be her revised dissertation will be published by the University of Massachusetts press next year. It's had two titles along the way I loved. I love the one that it's not going to have restless readers. But in fact its title will be Culture Club. The Curious History of the Boston Athenaeum. Catherine thanks. Good afternoon. I'm here to talk about a dispute between two high profile Boston Brahmans. The year's 1853 the man in question

Josiah Quincy and George technique. Unfortunately I don't have any visual candy for you this afternoon but I am confident that in the course of this talk the colorful personalities of the two protagonists will become evident. And the Bostonian who happened to browse in the city's Daily Advertiser on March 24th 1853 would have encountered an angry article in defense of the Athenaeum. Perhaps the newspaper reader indifferent to elite infighting would have passed over the piece but perhaps he or she would have perceived it with interest. Curious about the fate of this important institution as well as the future of an embryonic city library about which much fuss was being made in the local papers. City leaders were launching a public library. And many people considered the Boston Athenaeum the obvious site for the new Civic resource a

library to be accessible to all the people of Boston. The newspaper article fashioned as an appeal to the proprietors of the Athenaeum and soon published in pamphlet form for wider circulation. It was written by Josiah Quincy who expressed his fear that if subsumed under a public library the Athenaeum would be misused by the city he wrote in behalf of the deceased members. And founders of this institution earnestly and treat every proprietor of the Athenaeum to put down. Every attempt to transfer the sacred trust to the city authorities. What lay behind such heated rhetoric. And what does it reveal about civic obligation and an openness in the 19th century Boston at the time of Quincy's article the Athenaeum active for almost 50 years had recently settled into its new home. This elegant building on Beacon Street.

Overextended because of building costs the institution was financially vulnerable and to Quincy. The library and its prominent arc Ellerey were in danger of a government takeover. He went on to argue that the Athenaeum must heed the wishes of its earliest patrons. If the Athenaeum founders knew that the library was threatened they might well deliver a screed in unison from their tombs. The venerable Josiah Quincy as so many prominent Bostonians had taken to calling the aging former mayor and former Harvard president was clearly worried. His health had lately kept him from attending meetings at the Athenaeum but he felt moved to send his impassioned plea to the Boston Daily Advertiser. Quincy wanted to protest efforts by city officials and by some of the APA Nam's own 700 shareholders to make the Athenaeum the foundation for something called a public library a public library was a novel scheme

that meant in the words of its promoters many persons can be reading in their own homes the same work by the same. At the same time the Athenaeum less interested in the shifting when millions of popular literature are generally kept only one copy of each book listed in its catalog. The idea of a public library was in itself not to Josiah Quincy. What troubled Quincy in part was the pressure from the city whose officers had purchased property for their library on Somerset street. Around the corner from the Athenaeum making the institution easy prey for a merger. The tone of Quincy's feverish language with Old Testament. Charges of desecration and perversion signaled to the signaled the almost holy status the Athenaeum had come to hold for some of its members. The clamor for a public library all over Wendell Holmes would later call a

palace for the people. Caused a stir among Athan and proprietors precisely because it forced them to articulate their attachment to a beloved institution institution that was not strictly speaking for the people. David Tacey of the Athenaeum would soon reinterpret the original mission and reconsider the tacit contract between their institution and the community at large. But 1853 Josiah Quincy and his opponents disagreed on how public the Athenaeum was meant to be. Up to this point the survival instincts of the Athenaeum had impressed everyone founded an 18 0 7 as a reading room whose proprietors bought shares of membership by 1851 it had moved four times. Weathered economic uncertainty and grown to house some 50000 volumes as well as substantial paintings and sculptures. So substantial galleries of paintings and sculptures the Athenaeum had always been

simultaneously ostentatious and but Neverland. And the Democratic tone of its prospectus had lent the place a sense of cohesion and shared belief. Yet all the while vague assumptions and confusing claims lurked in the background. So it was on March 20 8 1853 just four days after Quincy's letter to the editor a crowd of members gathered here on this Beacon Street site and probably in the space to decide the Athenaeum fate. A scene setting poem composed after the fact began this way on beacon when the sun was low. The young the old the fast the slow were ranged in many a solemn row throughout the sculpture gallery. In spite of the drama of the situation the proprietor's voted by a large majority to remain autonomous and much needed funds were raised through the

sale of additional shares later that year. Any quick summaries such as the account given in the athenæum Centennial history masks the nuanced debate within the institution. In fact the possible merger of the two libraries enjoyed considerable support considerable support among the institution's faithful readers. Some 80 Athenaeum members signed on to tech nurse plan. It was Georgia Tech nurse case in favor of the merger that a large Quincy tech nurse a self-appointed cultural gatekeeper emerged as the intellectual architect of Boston's Public Library system. His plan illuminated the desperation about American education felt by many elite Bostonians at mid-century. A brief analysis of the dispute between techno and Quincy reveals both early ideas about public libraries and the threat of the Boston Public Library posed to the Athenaeum slow realists arrogant

self possessed the host of an elite intellectual salon. George Ticknor would hardly have seemed a natural advocate for public libraries. One might instead have expected Josiah Quincy whose life had been devoted to government service and education to embrace any means by which the city could open so impressive an institution. Yet these men took positions contrary to superficial expectation. Ticknor was an early proprietor of the Athenaeum he studied at the University of getting in and traveled throughout Europe before accepting a professorship in modern languages at Harvard. He served as an Athenaeum trustee for a decade he was vice president of the institution for the year 1833 Quincy and Athenaeum trustee and president for a time. Belonged to an old colonial family. Son of a revolutionary he was trained for a life in politics as mayor of the newly chartered city of Boston 18 23. He had used his learning and good sense to enact impressive reforms a police department a fire department

and the establishment of a central marketplace. We all know it's Quincy Market. But who are these men really. Well take techno at the time of the dispute was 62 years old. He perceived his role as a cultural guardian of sorts he travelled abroad widely and admired European libraries and institutions. He wanted to demonstrate the rewards of scholarship to Americans and he thought it was his duty to pass judgment on societies so he studied Spain and France as. A kind of cultural corpses whose empires revealed mistakes and offered cautionary tales. Quincy was 81 at the time of the dispute a commanding presence but not as as as technician together in the 18 20s and 30s they had worked alongside each other to improve the Athenaeum a quinsy approach tasks from the standpoint of administrative expertise not from the standpoint of cultural comparative studies on the subject of abolition to the men's differences were

sharp. Quincy viewed slavery through the lens of Southern expansionism and he was sympathetic with priests like Charles Sumner. In contrast according to biographers Ticknor believed in the inferiority of blacks. It's telling that in 1851 according to the Athenaeum zone borrowing the ledgers currency borrowed opus on Spanish literature from and with with through the second volume only after spending months with the first. He seems to have made it a real good faith effort to reach out to the intellect. The antebellum era a time of national soul searching produced many internal contradictions in Congress Lee of Quincy was the public servant who put little trust in government's stewardship of the Athenaeum. Ticknor was the snob who aim to destroy an elite Clave for the sake of the public good. There are small manifestos were published as

pamphlets after they appeared in letters in the newspaper as letters to the editor in each piece we discover anxiety about social change. In addition to a personal interpretation of the Athenaeum mission both men restate the intentions of the Athenaeum founders and both speculate about how those aims were meant to serve a changing city. At the time of the dispute Ticknor was devoting much energy to planning the public library and Quincy had retired from public life and responded to the proposal only because his opinion was quote repeatedly requested by opponents whereas Ticknor emphasized the goal or end of the merger a truly public library for Boston Quincy emphasized the process or means of the merger and unscrupulous abuse of deceased benefactors trust. They both seemingly had great affection for this why Barry but clearly they view their the Athenaeum future very differently.

Tickers views were informed by his experience as a contributor to the North American Review a literary journal that had been promoting libraries for decades. In that journal a library was called public. If it was not a home based collection university libraries as well as those generally held by shares open to pursue subscription such as the Athenaeum and a similar institution called the Boston Library society were considered to be in this class public. Indeed there were a variety of library types. Both the Boston Mercantile Library and the Boston mechanic apprentices library were founded in 18 20 such business libraries served artisans clerks and young merchants so public was a slippery term. As we will see the background to the establishment of the Boston Public Library the planning that animated George took America is important because the BPL

provides a useful for oil and a sense of definition to the Athenaeum. Unlike the Athenaeum which was insulated from state influence the new public library depended on a statute that guaranteed its support through taxation. An annual sum of $5000 was allocated for its establishment and maintenance. This was the first law 1848 passed to help found an American public library in a formal report as a public library trustee to. Devise a rough theory of library service. His plan of luring prospective new readers depended on the wide circulation of books as he repeatedly explained multiple copies and generals General Circulation rules would ensure that many persons if they desired it could be reading the same work at the same time. Ticknor and other founders of the BPO were prescriptive in their discussion of books for the masses. Self-styled missionaries these men approached their project in a patronizing but

passionate manner. The dispute over whether to merge with the city's library certainly jarred many of the Athenaeum members yet pressure about access to their institution was nothing new. For example in 1847 a letter to the editor of one newspaper suggested that the Athenaeum reduce its subscription price so that quote the institution could become what it ought to be a public library. The newspaper added the comment that a good public library was generally accessible and more generally accessible than any we have is certainly to be desired in this respect we are far behind many European cities notes from the Athenaeum annual meeting of 1849 refer to a feeling of anxious interest which has lately been awakened as to the future prospects of this valuable institution. If the new fangled public library was considered a threat to the AFA name what exactly was threatened. The other man

had always functioned as a network of families in his short study of the institution's scholar Ronald storey observes that five distinct family groups filled most of the administrative roles of the Athenaeum between 18 07 1860 and the idea of inherited privilege was strengthened with the passing down of shares to a son at a formal occasion. The notion of the library as a protected space apart from the world had contributed to the pleasure of its readers during its early years on. Pearl Street the dignity of the Perkins mansion and the enforcement of the institution's rules invited shareholders to become members of a special community notwithstanding to claim that four fifths of its Perth proprietors regarded their interest in the athenæum as public. The place was of course relatively exclusive. The fee of three hundred dollars a share was prohibitive to many and proprietors always maintained a limit on the number of shares outstanding complaints about the inaccessibility

appear throughout the historical record. For another example in 1826 a scathing letter to the editor was published in a Boston newspaper. What literary advantages have the masses of our citizens derive from the APHA male read. Who gets a peep within its lofty walls without a $10 bill. When the poor are favored with admission to study the neatly fitted up shelves of books which adorn the Athenaeum we shall be convinced of the necessity as well as the worth of it and not before. But again. The idea of publicness was. Slippery. It's not the only thing. In fact the eponym was the focus of a baffling a ray of characterization in 1816 Quincy himself in an oxymoronic flourish called the Athenaeum exclusively public. Meaning that the library was not the property of a private individual collector.

That description would seem to align Quincy with his eventual adversary technique. Thirty five years after Quincy's comment. The librarian of the Smithsonian identified the Athenaeum in similar terms. Quote The Athenaeum is hardly surpassed either in size or in value by any other in the country and its regulations are framed with a design that answer the highest purposes of a public library. Practically it is such. Yet the practices of the institution. No direct access to the shelves without a costly membership or personal introduction oppose these claims. And when the pressure to go public was truly applied the Athenaeum retreated. Part of the exceptional nature of libraries is that their cultural work shuttles between private and public. In the Boston Public Library plan Ticknor wanted to attract private money from public spirited individuals suggesting that such benefactors donate to the reference department whose books would not circulate and that the author him a feeling of civic pride. Accompanied the purchase

of a life subscription or proprietary share in various ways both libraries exploited the notions of public and private inclusive and exclusive. To achieve their goals. So how can we understand the survival of the Boston Athenaeum in the dawning era of the great American Public Library. How could one city accommodate both the Athenaeum and the BPL scholar Hanes McMullan points to the staggering variety of library types that proliferated up to the late 19th century. Sometimes as his data show redundancy did not deter prospective patrons from supporting all kinds of libraries consolidation was not the universal goal. The city's competing membership library the Boston Library society survived as an independent entity until 1939. The Boston Mercantile Library persisted until 1952. In the case of the Athenaeum in the public

library there was much overlap in their missions their benefactors and their supporters. Yet the variety of library types does not explain away the author names persistent exclusivity. A close knit group Athenaeum readers were accustomed to one another and comforted by familiarity in the reading room. The institution was launched in the decades after the American Revolution a time when people worried about stable civic foundations. The other man's original aim to become quote the fountain at which all who choose may gratify their thirst for knowledge would sound insincere. For the implications of such a mission proved unpalatable to many Bostonians just as anxiety contributed to the acronyms founding so anxiety explained its survival. Although a number of Athenaeum leaders were active in the public library movement the crisis of threatened public menace triggered by the BPL forced the Athenaeum to look inward and cultivate pride in its distinct but admittedly shrunken role. A remark by the Committee of the library in 1855

reveals a new found comfort with its settled if now marginal place in the city. Quote While the city library is fulfilling to so gratifying an extent the anticipations of its warmest friends. By supplying the demand for popular literature. It is hoped that the Athenaeum may supply to its proprietors and to Men of Letters and Science generally a constantly improving collection of works of intrinsic value and permanent importance or redefined purpose is now detectable somewhat reined in from the institution's original 18 0 7. Perspective. In conclusion. The dispute between Georgia Tech mare and Quincy allowed buried assumptions to surface. Ultimately the city accommodated and would sustain a wide range of library experiences that the Athenaeum does not Ribera represent a mere phase in the evolution of the public library. As George TechNet predicted it would. It's part of its rich history

and to its credit. The institution continues to re-evaluate its complicated place in the history of the city of Boston. Thank you. Tony. We've only been in existence for four years so we really can't tell whether any of those students have gone on to become professional writers. Snowden has a as an excellent track record in getting students to college though so they're the first students we had or are still in college. We have hopes. I don't know all the the Internet so how the stem Calderwood made his decision but I know he was. We love the Athenaeum. And he and he was a I am a longtime proprietor and felt that he didn't want the program to be at a particular college which would have imposed its own particular notions

on on writing you know different colleges have different attitudes toward writing and they have it in their own way of doing things we do it this way here. The name was probably viewed as a sort of neutral site. But you can you add anything to that. OK. So it was because the as the name was not a not involved in the actual teaching of writing that he thought it was a inappropriate place. And so we've started from scratch. Do I have any preferences. This was the clue. One of his ideas which was never carried out was to think about a contest a writing contest and the group that sat down and worked out a plan for the cold writing initiative decided that a contest only rewards people who are already good writers. It's a much harder task to take students who are not necessarily good writers and make them better writers. So I think that's the only

thing that he had in mind. Oh I've I've always felt very welcome and I think that I'm just so impressed with the outreach. I feel like especially with the renovation there have been opportunities that were never possible before in terms of space. My experience has been nothing but a pleasure. Thank you for asking. And I think this is such. A wonderful pairing. Actually. It turns out these themes because it's about community and it's about reaching outside the doors of the Athenaeum which was something that in 1853 was a little bit. Nerve racking but I don't think it is. In fact yes yes that was. All in the family it takes many times.

Yes Josiah Quincy Jr. was a supporter early supporter of the BPL. So you just want to wish you were back at the dinner table with them and wish you could have heard some of the. Arguments that went on between the elder and younger sons but yes I think in terms of you know the social circles at that point I'm not sure I could track successfully some of the gossip that went on. But it is interesting that within the Quincy family there were so many outlooks on the future of libraries in Boston Ticknor was prolific in terms of writing letters. And there are collections volumes of letters in terms of the debate the two salient primary sources really are the two pamphlets that emerge from the newspaper articles. So I had to sort of make some imaginative imaginative leaps in connecting the dots. But all Bostonians from big letter writers like thank you.

Thank you.