http://flyaqis.museum.vic.gov.au/paimages/mm/000/000265.htm

What is a mechanics’ institute? A social library with the specific designation of

being for mechanics and the upper echelon of the working class.

Required one to pay dues, but often employers covered the cost in one way or another

In the strict and early libraries, collected primarily engineering, physical philosophy, and chemistry.

Functioned as a venue for lectures on a variety of educational topics

What is a mechanic?

Descendent of the artisan Skilled labour Often directly below the ranks of the

middle class, and thus often nearly on the same footing as the factory bosses.

http://www.nms.ac.uk/our_collections/highlights/boulton_and_watt_engine.aspx

Boulton and Watt Engine, 1786Created for the Barclay & Perkins Brewery in Southwark, London

Setting the stage

Shift in labour needs from the end of the 18th and into the 19th century.

Recentralizing of populations into urban centres

Working poor and the stratification of the lower classes

Need for Mechanics’ Institutes Where did they flourish? Who were their early founders?

George Birkbeck and the Glasgow Mechanics Institute

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/EDbirkbeck.htm

1776-1841

The early mechanics’ institutes

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Manchester_Mechanics_Institute_%281825%29.jpg

Manchester Mechanics’ Institute

Lecture series

The rhetoric of improvement

http://www.institutelibrary.org/history.html

The pinnacle of the movement

The Great Exhibition of 1851

http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/dukemag/issues/111206/depgal2.html

The decline and fall

Pandering lectures and cramming in education in between vaudeville and other entertainment

Empire and Western expansion Self-Reliance becoming more en vogue

than self-help. Lack of time, energy, space, desire. Competing factors: Public library

movement, paperback books, the pub.

Mechanics’ Institutes today

The ever changing library In New Haven, CT.