From Social Hygiene to Consumer Health: Libraries, Health Information, and the American Public from the Late Nineteenth Century to the 1980s

Abstract The evolution of health information services in American libraries has been interwoven with public health concerns and library social missions since the late 1800s. While libraries have always engaged in disseminating health and medical information, priorities have shifted and expanded over time in response to public demands and expectations, as well as libraries’ own perceptions of their responsibilities to their constituencies. Based on a review of all issues of Library Journal published since 1876 and of the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association since 1911, this article addresses the challenges and tensions libraries of all types have encountered, as well as the successes they have implemented, from the late nineteenth century into the 1980s, before digital resources became widely available to the everyday consumer.