July 5, 2024
In 1935 Kentucky mountaineers 'grasped and clung to the Pack Horse Library idea with all the tenacity of one starved for learning'.
Eight of the women who worked as Pack Horse Librarians in Kentucky during the 1930s. Photo courtesy of the University of Kentucky Digital Library’s Goodman-Paxton Collection
Eight of the women who worked as Pack Horse Librarians in Kentucky during the 1930s. Photo courtesy of the University of Kentucky Digital Library’s Goodman-Paxton Collection
Eight of the women who worked as Pack Horse Librarians in Kentucky during the 1930s. Photo courtesy of the University of Kentucky Digital Library’s Goodman-Paxton Collection
"The Pack Horse Library initiative, which sent librarians deep into Appalachia, was one of the New Deal’s most unique plans. The project, as implemented by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), distributed reading material to the people who lived in the craggy, 10,000-square-mile portion of eastern Kentucky. The state already trailed its neighbors in electricity and highways. And during the Depression, food, education and economic opportunity were even scarcer for Appalachians.
"They also lacked books: In 1930, up to 31 percent of people in eastern Kentucky couldn’t read. Residents wanted to learn, notes historian Donald C. Boyd. Coal and railroads, poised to industrialize eastern Kentucky, loomed large in the minds of many Appalachians who were ready to take part in the hoped prosperity that would bring. 'Workers viewed the sudden economic changes as a threat to their survival and literacy as a means of escape from a vicious economic trap,' writes Boyd.
"This presented a challenge: In 1935, Kentucky only circulated one book per capita compared to the American Library Association standard of five to ten, writes historian Jeanne Cannella Schmitzer. It was 'a distressing picture of library conditions and needs in Kentucky', wrote Lena Nofcier, who chaired library services for the Kentucky Congress of Parents and Teachers at the time." - Eliza McGraw
In 1934 the first WPA-sponsored packhorse library was formed in Leslie County.
Article:Women Delivered Library Books on Horses in 1938
Article:These Kentucky Librarians Traveled Miles on Horseback to Deliver Books During the Great Depression
"In this inspiring picture book by best-selling author Jane Yolen, Anna Mary stands in for all the real-life horseback librarians who helped keep the love of books alive in Appalachia during the Great Depression. This is a lovely peek at a chapter of U.S. history that helped instill a love of reading in a generation of Appalachian kids."
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