What Middletown Read

The What Middletown Read Project reproduces in digital form the extant circulation records of the Muncie Indiana, Public Library, between 1891 and 1902. Using these resources, scholars have been able to explore reading choices and library usage in this quintessentially American city at a moment of profound social and economic change. The data came to light through a stroke of good fortune, when Frank Felsenstein, of Ball State’s English Department and Honors College, uncovered a unique cache of surviving library records that included detailed circulation ledgers. A team of BSU students, faculty, and staff, with funding support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Gladys Kreible Delmas Foundation, used them as the basis for a fully searchable online database. WMR has generated numerous publications, including Frank Felsenstein and James J. Connolly, What Middletown Read: Print Culture in an American Small City. The project also earned recognition from the NEH in 2015 as one of 50 “Great Projects Past and Present” funded by the Endowment during its first 50 years of existence.