but always I have tried to stay within the boundaries of the
evidence.
DEFINITION OF "HISTORY AND "PUBLIC LIBRARIES"
For purposes of this paper two terms need to be clarified
and the meaning defined. These terms are "history" and "public
11braries." The first term "history" has received considerable
attention from scholars and practitioners of the discipline. The distinguished historian E. H. Carr of Cambridge University posed
the question: What is history? and made it the title of his book
in 1962. Barbara W. Tuchman in her book Practicing. History also
defined the historian's task. Carr answered the question, What
is history? by stating that "it is a continuous process of
interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending
dialogue between the present and the past.” Tuchman put it this way - "the historian's task is ... to tell what happened within
the discipline of the facts. What imagination is to the poet,
facts are to the historian. His exercise of judgement comes in
their selection, his art in their arrangement. His method is
narrative. His subject is the story of man's past. His function is to make it known." John Calvin Colson in The Writing of
American Library History, 1876-1976 said, "history is the