Re: textbooks

["David Vancil" <libvanc@cml.indstate.edu>]

Yes, elementary school readers are considered textbooks, and they 
comprise more than 50% of the Floyd Family Collection of textbooks 
used in Indiana and a similar proportion of the Walker Collection of 
pre-1901 textbooks, with emphasis on New England, all in the Rare 
Books and Special Collections Department in the Indiana State 
University Library.

> I am not sure if Blanche Clegg and others include in the concept of
> "textbooks" also elementary school readers.  Those, too, would deserve
> attention.  I sometimes think that if the rest of the world had been
> reading elementary school readers of Hitler's Germany, there might have
> been a higher state of readiness for the war. Whether that is true or not,
> every reading nation's children are marked for life by those books, be
> they silly or patronizing or superpatriotic or whatever.
> 
> I realize that does not make them "rare books"; but they are very hard to
> come by. In some (many?) countries, they seem simply not to be available
> outside of the school systems.
> 
> Does any library in the country collect this kind of material?
> 
> Svbato Schutzner    ssch@loc.gov 
David Vancil, Head
Rare Books and Special Collections
Cunningham Memorial Library
Indiana State University
Terre Haute, IN 47809
812/237-2611; FAX: 812/237-2567
libvanc@cml.indstate.edu