Jan Budňák
‘Priceless Books Not Once Borrowed’: Education and the Behavior of Post-1900 Working-Class Readers, Based on the Example of the Workers’ Academy Library
The Prague Workers' Academy (Pražská Dělnická akademie), founded in 1896, became a central social-democratic educational institution at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The number of readers who visited its library in Prague or read books offered by travelling librarians also increased dramatically. The Workers' Academy also aimed to regulate operations, and above all to fund other workers' libraries, in part with the help of the handbook Vzorná spolková knihovna dělnická ('Standard associational workers' library'), which was gradually expanded over successive editions (1902, 1909, 1920). The article provides partial statistical information about the reading preferences of the workers' academy library patrons, comparing them to period representations by social-democratic education workers of the working-class reader. The apparent harmony between working-class readers and socialist librarians, which can be seen, for example, in the periodical Dělnická osvěta, turns out to be conditioned by the distinctive selections that resulted in these libraries' collections.
Keywords: František Václav Krejčí - Workers' Academy - workers' readers - Edvard Hegner - Jan Veis - social democracy - socialist education
design by Bedřich Vémola
