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http://flyaqis.museum.vic.gov.au/paimages/mm/000/000265.htm
What is a mechanics’ institute? A social library with the specific designation of
being for mechanics and the upper echelon of the working class.
Required one to pay dues, but often employers covered the cost in one way or another
In the strict and early libraries, collected primarily engineering, physical philosophy, and chemistry.
Functioned as a venue for lectures on a variety of educational topics
What is a mechanic?
Descendent of the artisan Skilled labour Often directly below the ranks of the
middle class, and thus often nearly on the same footing as the factory bosses.
http://www.nms.ac.uk/our_collections/highlights/boulton_and_watt_engine.aspx
Boulton and Watt Engine, 1786Created for the Barclay & Perkins Brewery in Southwark, London
Setting the stage
Shift in labour needs from the end of the 18th and into the 19th century.
Recentralizing of populations into urban centres
Working poor and the stratification of the lower classes
Need for Mechanics’ Institutes Where did they flourish? Who were their early founders?
George Birkbeck and the Glasgow Mechanics Institute
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/EDbirkbeck.htm
1776-1841
The early mechanics’ institutes
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Manchester_Mechanics_Institute_%281825%29.jpg
Manchester Mechanics’ Institute
Lecture series
The rhetoric of improvement
http://www.institutelibrary.org/history.html
The pinnacle of the movement
The Great Exhibition of 1851
http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/dukemag/issues/111206/depgal2.html
The decline and fall
Pandering lectures and cramming in education in between vaudeville and other entertainment
Empire and Western expansion Self-Reliance becoming more en vogue
than self-help. Lack of time, energy, space, desire. Competing factors: Public library
movement, paperback books, the pub.
Mechanics’ Institutes today
The ever changing library In New Haven, CT.