About the Project

 About the Project: Process and Reflections

Researching the history of the Wayland Free Public Library has been a fascinating and rewarding experience. When we (Brandeis History Ph.D. students Rafael Abrahams, Joseph Weisberg, and Elizabeth Simms) were recruited by WFPL to create a project in honor of the library’s 175th anniversary, we had no expectation or vision about what we would find that might capture our interest, let alone the attention of a nonacademic public. Over the past sixteen months, from November 2021 to March 2023, we have been repeatedly moved and inspired by our research material and have encountered more interesting threads of history through WFPL’s archives than we have been able to fully treat. As historians, it can be difficult to make sense of the chasms in time that separate us from our research subjects. 175 years ago, on March 6, 1848, the Town of Wayland voted to accept a sum of one thousand dollars (five hundred from Brown University President and putative town namesake Francis Wayland, and the other half raised by the residents themselves) for the establishment of a free public library. In researching this project and hearing the voices of so many unique stakeholders in the library—past and present, residents and scholars—the necessity of a public library seems just as urgent and immense now as it did then, and the chasm in time does not seem quite so great after all. 

The bulk of the writing in this pamphlet tells the history of the Wayland Free Public Library as an institution: its founding and development, its functions in the community, its collections and personnel, and the physical buildings and spaces that housed it. This history was drawn largely from the archives of the Wayland Free Public Library, some which are in the process of digitization. At times, we supplemented the library’s rich archive with other primary and secondary sources that helped us place the library’s history in larger contexts and movements. Each essay in this project includes footnotes and a bibliography that provide more precise information about what we consulted and offer an idea of what treasures lay in the archives.  This project comprises this website and a book.

One piece of evidence essential to our project is the Wayland Town Meeting minutes, which can be viewed on Massachusetts’s Digital Commonwealth website. While we did our best to draw out the most interesting and relevant pieces of these documents, the archive is far too broad for us to have systematically analyzed each and every word. We encourage future historians to use these minutes as a backbone for research that might extend, explicate, or revise the narrative that we have offered.

While much has changed in the past 175 years, some common threads tie together the library of Francis Wayland and John Burt Wight’s time with the institution it is today. The WFPL has always served as a beacon of education for Wayland’s residents. The library’s leaders have, in turn, wrestled with similar questions many times over regarding what precisely the education of the public should look like. Should town officials set the agenda for public education by choosing particularly edifying books for the library’s collection while refusing those that they consider trivial? Or should the library’s collection reflect popular taste and provide patrons with access to the books that they most want to read? 

Another recurrent question is the role of the library as a community space. Should the library retain a strict focus on lending books, or should it serve the community as a meeting ground for social clubs, entertainment, and in dire circumstances, public safety? While the library’s functions have expanded over time, it has been a site of (and a reason for) celebration many times over the years, from the August 26, 1851 procession honoring Francis Wayland to our History of WFPL’s 175 Years program on March 19, 2023. 

Other aspects of the WFPL would be unrecognizable to its first generation of leaders and patrons. Librarianship has seen tremendous changes across multiple dimensions. While male librarians ran the library for roughly its first three decades, the appointment of Sarah H. Heard as librarian in 1885 reflected a nationwide trend toward women’s dominance of the librarian profession, which continues into the present day. While early librarians tended to be trusted community members, in 1901, Mrs. Everett Small (née Mabel T. Stables) was appointed librarian on the basis of her qualifications as a graduate of Boston University. This trend toward professionalization has only grown: in Wayland, a degree in library science was required for the Director starting around 1954. Today, it is mandatory for all professional positions.

Technological development has significantly expanded the types of items and services available to library patrons. In John Burt Wight’s day, the library loaned its users physical books from its own small collection. Today, patrons can borrow books and other materials from the forty other libraries in the Minuteman Library Network, other library networks across the state, and even libraries in other parts of the country. Patrons can also borrow digital books and audiobooks, stream movies and music, and use a range of devices including laptops, scanners, and 3D printers. 

The history of the WFPL is not only interesting on its own merit, but also because of the encounters that this institution has had with broader themes in American history. In addition to the contents of this publication, we have researched and written a number of essays that situate the WFPL within wider narratives, including Indigenous societies that lived in Wayland before white settlement, the two world wars and the Cold War, and the Reagan Revolution. We have also written case studies about a typewriter stolen from the library in 1911, and the library’s engagement with animal life and its “employment” of a beloved cat named Gordon. These pieces are available online through the WFPL’s website.

While we are proud of the research we have done on the history of the WFPL and its broader connections, there are innumerable inquiries that we have not had the time to explore. Dr. Robert Gross, an accomplished historian of New England educational institutions, suggested a number of additional avenues for investigation that our archival sources might provide. Some of these questions have been partially answered through revisions or additions to our original manuscript, but they by and large remain unexplored terrain for future researchers to tackle:

1. One thing that libraries do is generate statistics— number of books, books per capita, fees, etc. How does Wayland compare to its neighbors? 
2. Who were WFPL officers? Were they professionals in the metro center, or farmers in the outskirts? 
3. As we know, Sudbury was a haven for abolitionist thought. To what extent did Wayland officers run the library with a view toward being “apolitical”? 
4. Was there competition in Wayland between the public library and other book and pamphlet purveyors, like bookstores and private libraries? 
5. If we consider the role that buildings and monuments played in constructing a sense of the public, what might the Wayland Town House have represented? 
6. Did the WFPL ever censor its collection? If so, when and why? 
7. Consider that collections in libraries quickly become outdated, e.g. technical manuals are replaced within a matter of years. Given this fact, did taxpayers ever complain about paying for the library budget? 
8. Did the WFPL bolster the funds it received from tax revenue with private donations, e.g. from a Friends organization? By the same token, if the library was a town building under the control of selectmen rather than a private building under the control of a corporation, did that affect its use, e.g. as a public defense location in the Cold War?

If you are reading this, you are a stakeholder in WFPL, a researcher of New England library history, a student of history in general, or all three. We thank you for engaging with our work, and we are excited to see what is in store for the future of the Wayland Free Public Library. 

With gratitude,

Rafael Abrahams, Elizabeth Simms, and Joseph Weisberg

Ph.D. Students, Department of History, Brandeis University GSAS

Acknowledgments

This project would not have been possible without the support of many knowledgeable and gracious community members in Wayland, Brandeis, and beyond:

We would like to thank Marjanneke Wright, WFPL Reference, Bibliographic Services, and Archives Librarian for recruiting us to this fascinating project. 

We would not have been able to connect with the WFPL or complete our work without the firm and steady support of Dr. Amy Singer, Brandeis History Department Director of Graduate Studies.

As nonresidents of Wayland, we also beholden to a number of Wayland community members who shared their research and personal histories with us: Louise Brown, WFPL Director Emeritus; Sandra Co, transcription and genealogy specialist; Jane Sciacca, de facto Wayland town historian; and Katherine Gardner-Westcott, Curator of the Wayland Historical Society. We are also grateful for the work of designer Emily Kristofek, who has undertaken the arduous task of giving visual form to our words, and Andy Moore, WFPL Assistant Director, for editorial assistance.

Throughout this project, we have also received excellent technological advice from staff at the Library and at Brandeis. Tyler Kenney (WFPL Reference Librarian and Computer Specialist) has been instrumental in setting up the WFPL History website. At Brandeis, we were fortunate to collaborate with Ian Roy (Director for Research Technology and Innovation) and Jalon Kimes (Brandeis MakerLab VR and 3D Modeling Specialist), who helped us create 3-D printed models of the library buildings that are on display throughout the celebration. Ambrus Hernádi (Lecturer in Film) also offered invaluable help when we shot and edited our interview with Louise Brown.

As the anniversary event approached, we were incredibly fortunate to secure the expertise of Dr. Robert Gross (Professor Emeritus at the University of Connecticut). In addition to delivering the keynote address at our anniversary celebration, Dr. Gross helped us situate the library’s history within a broader context.

At an early date, we benefited from the guidance of Dr. Elyssa Tardif (Massachusetts Historical Society Director of Education). Dr. Tardif helped share her insights about writing public history and helped us brainstorm ideas about what our final product might look like when we were not quite sure how we wanted to share our research. 

We are grateful to have benefitted from the generous support of The Connected PhD, a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, awarded to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Brandeis University. Principal Investigators: Dean Wendy Cadge and Assistant Dean Alyssa Stalsberg Canelli. We also appreciate the generous financial support of the Trustees of the Wayland Free Public Library in producing this anniversary work.