“A Magnetic Feature of Our Work with Children”: Building Community Through Children’s Work and Storytelling at the Free Library of Philadelphia in the Early Twentieth Century

Based on extensive archival research, this article argues that between 1903 and 1916, the Free Library of Philadelphia's (FLP's) story hours-and its children's work more broadly-represented a crucible of community building. This community building depended upon librarians' awareness and attentiveness (e.g., apprehending social, cultural, economic, and environmental concerns, needs, and wants), involvement (e.g., participating in community activities and community organizations), connection (e.g., integrating library services into the community as well as embedding community work in the library's organizational culture), and belief in their ability to make a profound difference in their users' lives. Community building was both local and national, place-based and imagined. Moreover, it was inextricable from librarians' professionalization efforts. The FLP's early twentieth century experience suggests that the process of community building is more ambivalent and nuanced than scholars recognize. Not merely a tool of the powerless, community building may be a tool of the powerful. Additionally, we problematize current storytelling scholarship. The practice may encourage belonging, on the one hand, but exclusion, on the other. In the FLP's case, story hours purveyed a distinctively hegemonic notion of American citizenship. These programs both reflected and perpetuated a pervasive tension between democratic universalism and ethnoracial particularism.