Eliza Atkins Gleason Book Award is presented by the Library History Round Table[1] of the American Library Association every third year to recognize the best book written in English in the field of library history, including the history of libraries, librarianship, and book culture.
The award is named after Eliza Atkins Gleason, the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in librarianship in 1940. Her Ph.D. was earned at the University of Chicago Graduate Library School under advisor, Carleton B. Joeckel. The dissertation was revised and published in 1941 by the University of Chicago Press as The Southern Negro and the Public Library; a Study of the Government and Administration of Public Library Service to Negroes in the South.[2]
The Library History Round Table also sponsors the Justin Winsor Prize (library).
The Library History Round Table, was established in 1947. Historical articles appeared on the 50th anniversary in the journal, Libraries & Culture [3] and the 75th in the journal, Libraries: Culture, History, and Society .[4][5]
Recipients
edit| Year | Author | Title | Publisher | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | Louise Robbins | The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown: Civil Rights, Censorship, and the American Library | University of Massachusetts Press | [7] |
| 2007 | Carl Ostrowski | Books, Maps, and Politics: a Cultural History of the Library of Congress, 1783-1861 | University of Massachusetts Press | |
| 2010 | David Allan | A Nation of Readers: The Lending Library in Georgian England | British Library | [8] |
| 2013 | Dr. Christine Pawley | Reading Places: Literacy, Democracy, and the Public Library in Cold War America | University of Massachusetts Press | [9] |
| 2016 | Dr. Cheryl Knott | Not Free, Not for All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow | University of Massachusetts Press | |
| 2019 | Wayne A. Wiegand and Shirley A. Wiegand | The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South | Louisiana State University Press | [10] |
| 2022 | Rebecka Taves Sheffield | Documenting Rebellions: A Study of Four Lesbian and Gay Archives in Queer Times | Litwin Books, LLC 2020 | [11] |