What Middletown Read

What Middletown Read is a database and search engine built upon the circulation records of the Muncie (Indiana) Public Library from November 5, 1891 to May 27, 1893 and from November 5, 1894 to December 3, 1902. It documents every book that every library patron borrowed during those periods. The Center for Middletown Studies, University Libraries, and several other Ball State units collaborated in the construction on the online database. It forms the basis for What Middletown Read: Print Culture in an American Small City (Massachusetts 2015), an exploration of reading experience and American print culture written by project directors Frank Felsenstein and James Connolly. The Center for Middletown Studies, with support from the DSL, continues to develop the database and pursue research on local and regional print culture
history.