I do love a book that teaches me history!

This visual display has been prepared to complement the promotion of the University of Kentucky Libraries’ Works Progress Administration / Work Projects Administration (WPA) materials collection. These became very popular in the region, enough so that patrons began making scrapbooks of their own recipes, family history, sewing patterns and child-rearing advice for circulation by the pack horse librarians throughout the community. The story is significant in outlining the plight of ravished coal-mining communities in …

I'm reading The Book Woman Of Troublesome Creek this week, and although it is fiction, it is inspired by history. Both the history of the Pack Horse Librarians, and the history of the blue people of Kentucky. Horseriding Books. The pack horse librarians rode up to 120 miles a week to make their deliveries, no matter what the weather.

Librarians riding horses or mules traveled 50 to 80 miles a week up rocky creekbeds, along muddy footpaths, and among cliffs to deliver reading materials to the most remote residences and schools in the mountains. Women were very involved in the project which eventually had 30 different libraries serving 100,000 people. 4, pp. The region serviced by these pack horse librarians (mostly women) was the mining territory of Eastern Kentucky, and life was not easy for the resident families who had no chance of a different life or escape. Established in 1935, the Pack Horse Library Project was aimed at providing reading materials to rural portions of Eastern Kentucky with no access to public library facilities.


A Pack Horse Librarian returning over the mountain side for a new supply of books (Part of Goodman-Paxton Photographic Collection, Kentucky Digital Library) Horse-Riding Librarians … This visual display has been prepared to complement the promotion of the University of Kentucky Libraries’ Works Progress Administration / Work Projects Administration (WPA) materials collection. (SOUNDBITE OF "THE KEEPERS" THEME SONG) DAVID GREENE, HOST: Picture a librarian on horseback hauling books over the rugged terrain of Kentucky coal country in the 1930s.
Intended as a child's book, DOWN CUT SHIN CREEK: The Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky is filled with photos of the program established during the Depression of the 1930's. I do love a book that teaches me history! In 1940, Vance writes, 2,653 scrapbooks were circulated among Pack Horse Library patrons. Using their own horses or mules, or renting them from neighbors, the Pack Horse Librarians stuffed their saddlebags with books, magazines, Sunday school materials and carefully-assembled scrapbooks of stories, pictures and recipes.

University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center.