In 1972 Browne established an academic Department of Popular Culture at the university. He was also the founding editor of the Journal of Popular Culture, the Journal of American Culture, and the Popular Press (a university-based press) which has published hundreds of books about popular culture. The library’s collection is the most comprehensive archive of its kind in the United States.

Not Your Typical Library

The Browne Popular Culture collection includes research materials on popular fiction, popular entertainment, and the graphic arts. Though the collection does not circulate, the staff is available and eager to help visitors explore and find items of interest to them. Many of the items in the collection are included in the library catalog where you can find such categories as Rock & Roll, counterculture, peace and protest, and British popular culture from 1950 through 1975.

Also available at the Browne Library are vintage paperbacks, film and television collections, and a literature index. It has thousands of works related to all sorts of popular entertainment, with materials documenting mass media in the form of television, motion pictures, and radio.

From Comics to Romance

Love comics? Here you’ll find one of the largest comic collections in the country. If you lean more toward romance you’ll be pleased to know this library is the official repository for the Romance Writers of America’s papers. The collection includes graphic novels, tens of thousands of book covers, trading cards, and posters. The counter-culture section has 250 radical, anti-establishment titles from 1950 until 1989. As if that wasn’t enough to keep a visitor browsing for hours, information about cookery and cookbooks is also part of the collection, along with advertising images for movies, cosmetics, mail-order catalogs, and magazine ads.

Voice of Democracy

Browne believed, “Popular culture is the voice of democracy, democracy speaking and acting, the seedbed in which democracy grows. It is the everyday world around us, the mass media, entertainment, and diversions. It is our heroes, icons, rituals, everyday actions, psychology, and religion—our total life picture. It is the way of living we inherit, practice, and modify as we please, and how we do it. It is the dreams we dream while asleep.”

He admitted Popular Culture is a poorly understood academic specialty in which “Scarcely any two persons agree on what Popular Culture really is. Some scholars believe pop culture is what people do when they are not working. Some use terms such as ‘High-Brow’ and ‘Low-Brow,’ omitting terms such as ‘Folk-Cult’ or ‘Folk-Brow.’”

Embracing Society

For Browne, “the working definition of ‘PC’ is those elements of life which are not primarily intellectual. “PC” embraces all levels of our society except Elite culture.  The interests of the Center include the study of most of the aspects of life that impinge daily on all of us. The voice and the music of the people, the movements, sometimes glacial, of its past, present, and future. PC provides a kind of audio-video profile of a nation.”

Detroit native Bill Randle (March 14, 1923 – July 9, 2004) saw the collection’s potential and made one of the earliest and largest contributions in 1968. An academic at heart with 3 master’s degrees, a law degree, and a doctorate in American studies, Randle worked as a pioneering disc jockey. He DJ’d at several radio stations, including WERE in Cleveland, Ohio. Time Magazine named him the top DJ in America in 1955. He introduced Elvis Presley to a national television audience on January 28, 1956, the first DJ to do so.

Overcoming Resistance

Before retiring in 1992, Browne published Against Academia: The History of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Movement. He maintained that despite the enormity of success he’d experienced establishing the field of study of popular culture, he’d faced academic opponents who railed against it. However, after twenty years the Popular movement was firmly established. His work earned him the opportunity to serve as a consultant to the Smithsonian Institute on Popular Culture.

Today, over half a century later, the Browne Popular Culture Library he formed has over 250,000 items and continues to grow.  Some of that expansion is due to the efforts of Nancy Down, librarian at the Browne Collection until her recent retirement at the end of June 2023. She spent 27 of her 34 years with Bowling Green overseeing the Browne collection, first as cataloguer, then acting director. The Popular Culture Library gave her the opportunity to put her Ph. D. in English and her library degree from the University of Indiana to good use.

Librarian Nancy Down

For 27 of her 34 years with Bowling Green Librarian Nancy Down tended to this unique library, first as cataloguer, then acting director, and finally as director. She retired at the end of June 2023,  She gave her Ph.D. in English and library degree from the University of Indiana a good workout tracking the eclectic items in the collection.

“I became interested in growing the collection and seeing how far it would go. It is really different than any other library with items ranging from mysteries to Star Trek. I was especially fascinated with how cataloging fiction expanded from just the author’s name and book title to a great variety of genre classifications. Now there are dozens of genres for fiction and some cross categories such as romance and science fiction.

“It’s been fascinating to be part of a library system that has been chronicling the changing scene in America around diversity issues. One of the more unusual items in the collection is a book that translated a Shakespeare play into Klingon.  We also have a large collection of three-dimensional items and movie scripts. It’s been exciting to see how big the popular culture phenomenon has become. Other libraries also collect popular culture items but tend to specialize in one area such as science fiction or cartoons. This library is more of a generalist collection.”

Thank you for taking the time to read about this unique library. You might also enjoy what I wrote about my  Library tour or the importance of community libraries. Share this with a friend or sign up for your own free subscription at HowWiseThen. I will not sell your information. I look forward to introducing you to more libraries this fall, along with more details about the life of Pilgrim Mary Brewster.

Mary Brewster’s Love Life and Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures: available wherever books are sold. Bookshop.org/Mayflower; Mary Brewster
Amazon.com/Mary Brewster’s Love Life
Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles
BarnesandNoble/MaryBrewster
Autographed copies are available on my website.

The post Popular Culture Library appeared first on How Wise Then.

The Columbus Metropolitan Library Festival was the library’s first Book Festival, planned to celebrate its 150th anniversary. They estimate over 30,000 folks came out to check out the festivities. It was 18 months in the making and involved dozens and dozens of staff and volunteers. Over and over again, I heard people saying they hoped this was the first annual event. The Columbus Metropolitan Library has many good reasons to be very proud of an event that was well planned, expertly executed, and a tribute to books and the people who love them.  The 2023 Book Festival was a success on steroids.

Highlights of the Library

The Mirror Couple

I had a wonderful weekend at the Columbus Metropolitan Book Festival and thought you might enjoy visiting it via some of the photos I took. This was one of the best-organized events I’ve ever attended. The pre-event details were numerous and helpful.   It began on Friday evening with a reception for the authors, donors, and vendors, featuring appetizers and an open bar. This couple, known as the Mirror People, wandered around to keep things interesting. We also had the opportunity to explore the tent filled with books, music, and movies. I only came home with one book and three movies. This couple wandered around entertaining us.

Meeting Other Authors

Meet the authors panel

First thing Saturday morning, I moderated a panel with three talented authors. It was inspiring to meet (L-R) Erin Bartels, Lynn Blackburn, and Shelley Shepard Gray.  All their books are fascinating, and my list of books to read grew by leaps and bounds after meeting the authors in person.

Topiary Garden

I signed up for a booth, figuring it would be a canopy, table, and chairs. I was pleasantly surprised to discover it was a tent along a path that meanders through to the Topiary Garden. There is a small museum about the park only a few yards down the path from the booth, so I took time to visit it. The park is situated on the remnants of the Old Deaf School Park. The parkland dates back to the early 19th century when there was a dormitory and campus associated with the Deaf School. It’s a fascinating story that I’ll cover another day. For now, here’s a glimpse of a few of the charming items in the park.

Meeting Other Book Lovers

Booth #47

The tent protected us from the rain on Saturday and the heat on Sunday. Lots of folks stopped by to learn more about the story behind the Mayflower. I enjoy sharing some of my research resources with others who want to know more about the story behind this famous voyage. If that’s you, one resource I recommend is an amazing website managed by Caleb Johnson. Mayflower History has enough information about the ship, the voyage, and the people on it to keep you busy for hours.

Family Time

On my breaks, I wandered around admiring all the families spending time together exploring the many book options and enjoying a day in the park. With their permission, I took photos of these two parents enjoying a lovely day in a beautiful place. I hope one day these children will realize how fortunate they are to have parents who spend time with them enjoying some of life’s simple pleasures such as taking time to read together and stroll around a beautiful park.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article. Share it with a friend or sign up for your own free subscription at HowWiseThen. I will not sell your information. Select a monthly newsletter and/or weekly articles about whatever’s on my mind that week.

Mary Brewster’s Love Life and Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures: available wherever books are sold. Bookshop.org/Mayflower; Mary Brewster
Amazon.com/Mary Brewster’s Love Life
Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles
BarnesandNoble/MaryBrewster
Autographed copies are available on my website.

The post Book Festival appeared first on How Wise Then.

I love everything about Les Mis as it is known in my family. I’ve seen it on stage in multiple theatres in two countries, wore out the cassette tape version, have two CD versions in my car, and frequently listen to them. The quote above is my favorite quote from one of my favorite songs from this immortal story.

Back in the late 60s, before we knew our daughter would soon be joining our new marriage, Jim and I had a dream about what could become our first home that wasn’t campus housing or a marginal apartment. He was finishing college at Bowling Green. I was in my first full-time adult job at The Defiance Collage 45 miles to the west. We frequently drove through the charming village of Florida about halfway between the two.

A Dream Forms

This route took us past what had once upon a time been St. Peter’s Lutheran Church. The congregation moved to a new location and sold the building pictured here.

Former St. Peter Lutheran Church, Florida, OH

Some gutsy older single woman, whose name I’ve long since forgotten, bought it and turned it into her home. She was ready to move on and put a “For Sale” sign out front. We stopped by one day on our regular travels between Defiance and Bowling to get the tour. It was love at first sight. We wanted to live there.

What had been the chancel was now her living room. She created her bedroom in the choir loft, accessible only by a steep flight of stairs. Under the loft area, she created a kitchen and bathroom. Where the pews had once been, she had all manner of interesting furniture and furnishings.

We drove the miles between Defiance and Bowling Green speculating on all the amazing things we could do with that space. The parties we could host. The fun it would be to make it our own. The beauty of the stained glass windows.

Financing the Dream

We had only one small problem. We were living on my annual income of $5,000, supplemented by the part-time student-rate income Jim earned working at the BGSU Radio and TV station. Our combined income was nowhere near sufficient to make a downpayment and manage monthly mortgage payments. We struggled to come up with our $75/month rent.

But that did not stop us from dreaming about how wonderful it would be to call the lovely brick building our home. Dreams generate enthusiasm and hope. We had plenty of both, if not the funds to implement our dream. We did have four employed parents between us. So we asked them for a loan to make the downpayment.

I do not know if they conferred with each other, but they all were in agreement. “No.” No discussion. No bartering or bargaining. Just one loud, clear, not-to-be-challenged “No.”

A Dream That Could Not Be

Life went on. Jim graduated. Carol joined us, followed after a couple of years by Karen. We rented a while. We bought and sold a variety of homes in a plethora of places. Over time I completely forgot about the little Florida church. Until a couple of weeks ago when I was back in Northwest Ohio. We drove from Defiance to Bowling Green, right through Florida. And there was the church! Only now, it is a library. A library! Perfect. Being the daughter of a librarian, I literally partially grew up in libraries. Being a pastor, I’ve spent countless hours in churches of all sizes and locations.

Librarian Megan was also part genealogist and part local historian. She gave us a great tour of the library. I’ve since donated two of my books to the collection in a place that never became one of my many homes. There are dreams that cannot be. Perhaps, because they get in the way of other things that were meant to be instead.

Dreams That Do Come True

Who knows? If I had lived there, might I have missed out on the many wonderful other experiences I’ve had since then? It is true. There are dreams that cannot be and storms we cannot weather. It is equally true other dreams come along that are meant to be. Writing has always been one of my dreams. That dream has come true in astonishing ways.

I never got to live in this little brick church, but now two of my books do. If your travels ever take you to Florida, Ohio, take time to check out this delightful little church-turned-library. Megan will show you great hospitality.

PS: Readers need not apologize for reading books on loan from libraries. People who love books and libraries are thrilled to support libraries. If you love a book, be sure to tell someone about it. Word of mouth is still the best form of advertising. Asking your library to order a copy of your favorite book, even if I didn’t write it.

Mary Brewster’s Love Life and Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures: available wherever books are sold. Bookshop.org/Mayflower; Mary Brewster
Amazon.com/Mary Brewster’s Love Life
Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles
BarnesandNoble/MaryBrewster Autographed copies are available on my website.

The post Dreams That Cannot Be appeared first on How Wise Then.