Cheryl Ann Knott

Interests

Teaching

online searching; government information; information discovery; hacking and open source culture; information resource development

Research

history of public libraries; print culture and the environmental movement; information access

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Books

• Knott, C. A. (2016). Find the Information You Need!: Resources and Techniques for Making Decisions, Solving Problems, and Answering Questions.. Rowman Littlefield.
• Knott, C. A. (2015). Not Free, Not for All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow. University of Massachusetts Press.
  More info

  Americans tend to imagine their public libraries as time-honored advocates of equitable access to information for all. Through much of the twentieth century, however, many black Americans were denied access to public libraries or allowed admittance only to separate and smaller buildings and collections. While scholars have examined and continue to uncover the history of school segregation, there has been much less research published on the segregation of public libraries in the Jim Crow South. In fact, much of the writing on public library history has failed to note these racial exclusions.In Not Free, Not for All, Cheryl Knott traces the establishment, growth, and eventual demise of separate public libraries for African Americans in the South, disrupting the popular image of the American public library as historically welcoming readers from all walks of life. Using institutional records, contemporaneous newspaper and magazine articles, and other primary sources together with scholarly work in the fields of print culture and civil rights history, Knott reconstructs a complex story involving both animosity and cooperation among whites and blacks who valued what libraries had to offer. African American library advocates, staff, and users emerge as the creators of their own separate collections and services with both symbolic and material importance, even as they worked toward dismantling those very institutions during the era of desegregation.
• Knott, C. A. (2014). The publication and reception of The Southern Negro and the Public Library.
• Knott, C. A. (2012). What two books can (and cannot) do: Stewart Udall's the quiet crisis and its twenty-fifth anniversary edition.

Chapters

• Knott, C. A. (2018). Mettre la périphérie au centre : Dorothy B. Porter Wesley, bibliothécaire et chercheuse. In Histoire en marges: Les périphéries de l'histoire globale. Presses Universitaires François-Rabelais.
• Knott, C. A. (2017). Uncommon Knowledge: Late Eighteenth-Century American Subscription Library Collections. In Before the Public Library: Reading, Community, and Identity in the Atlantic World, 1650-1850. Brill.
• Knott, C. A. (2016). A Race Against Obscurity: Merl R. Eppse and The Negro, Too, in American History. In Writing History from the Margins: African Americans and the Quest for Freedom. Routledge.
• Knott, C. A. (2009). What a Book Can (and Can't) Do: Stewart Udall's The Quiet Crisis. University of Wisconsin Press.
  More info

  Chapter in an anthology refereed by Editors Rima D. Apple, Greg Downey, and Stephen Vaughn titled The Print Culture of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine.;
• Knott, C. A. (2012). "What a Book Can (and Can't) Do: Stewart Udall's The Quiet Crisis.". In Science in Print. University of Wisconsin Press.

Journals/Publications

• Knott, C. A. (2007). Unannounced and unexpected: The desegregation of Houston Public Library in the early 1950s. Library Trends.
• Knott, C. A. (2006). A virtual depository: The Arizona project. Reference Librarian.
• Knott, C. A. (2005). Measuring the new economy: Industrial classification and open source software production. Knowledge Organization.
• Knott, C. A. (2004). Assessing the virtual depository program: The Arizona experience. Journal of Government Information.
• Knott, C. A. (2003). Information as commodity and economie sector: Its emergence in the discourse of industrial classification. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.
• Knott, C. A. (2002). Imagining information retrieval in the library: Desk set in historical context. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.
• Knott, C. A. (2001). Elaborate Isolation: Metastructures of Knowledge About Women. Information Society.
• Knott, C. A. (2000). Books for black children: Public library collections in Louisville and Nashville, 1915-1925. Library Quarterly.

Proceedings Publications

• Knott, C. A. (2007). When more is better: A counter-narrative regarding keyword and subject retrieval in digitized diaries. In Advances in Classification Research Online.

Presentations

• Knott, C. A. (2017, June). “Materiality and Sustainability: The Ironies of Print”. Annual Conference, Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing. Victoria, Canada.
• Knott, C. A. (2017, March). "Think Globally, Act Nationally: The Translation and Transformation of The Limits to Growth". Annual Conference, American Society for Environmental History. Chicago.
• Knott, C. A. (2016, April). "Environmental Activism and Paper Pollution: The Ironies of Print". Annual Conference, American Society for Environmental History. Seattle, WA.
• Knott, C. A. (2016, July). "Translation and Transformation: The Limits to Growth and Halte à la Croissance?". Annual Conference, Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing. Paris, France.
• Knott, C. A. (2015, April). "Embodied Readers: A History of Racially Segregated Public Libraries in the U.S. South". Open Embodiments: Locating Somatechnics in Tucson.
• Knott, C. A. (2015, July). "Collections in Common: An Overlap Study of Library Company Catalogs from the 1790s,". Library History Seminar XIII. Boston, MA.
• Knott, C. A. (2015, July). "The Limits and Dynamics of Science Publishing". Annual Conference, Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing. Montreal, Canada.
• Knott, C. A. (2015, June). "A Librarian on the Margins of History: The Authorial Career of Dorothy Burnett Porter Wesley". Historians and the Margins: from North America to Former Empires. Université Paris Diderot.
• Knott, C. A. (2012, 2010-01-01). Collaborating to Build 'Colored' Libraries: The Strange Case of Booker T. Washington and Andrew Carnegie. Association for Library and Information Science Education Annual Conference. Boston.
  More info

  ;Submitted: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Knott, C. A. (2012, 2010-02-01). Preparing the Way: A Brief History of Library Education for African Americans. panel discussion organized by SIRLS student groups in honor of Black History Month and the 40th Anniversary of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. University of Arizona Library, Tucson.
  More info

  ;Invited: Yes;Type of Presentation: University;
• Knott, C. A. (2012, 2010-04-01). Pluck[ing] the Fruits of Science without Harming the Tree of Life": The Use of Scientific Research in Stewart L. Udall's The Quiet Crisis. Mellon/White Science and Print Culture Workshop. University of Wisconsin, Madison.
  More info

  ;Type of Presentation: University;
• Knott, C. A. (2012, 2010-06-01). Desegregating the Southern Public Library,. American Library Association. Washington, DC.
  More info

  Invited;Type of Presentation: Professional Organization;
• Knott, C. A. (2012, 2010-08-01). Collection Building from Below: The Negro Public Library in Tyler, Texas. Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing. Helsinki, Finland.
  More info

  ;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Knott, C. A. (2012, 2010-09-01). Selected Texts: The Shaping of One Racially Segregated Public Library's Collection. Library History Seminar XII. Madison, WI.
  More info

  ;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Knott, C. A. (2011, 2010-01-01). Collaborating to Build 'Colored' Libraries: The Strange Case of Booker T. Washington and Andrew Carnegie. Association for Library and Information Science Education Annual Conference. Boston.
  More info

  ;Submitted: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Knott, C. A. (2011, 2010-02-01). Preparing the Way: A Brief History of Library Education for African Americans. panel discussion organized by SIRLS student groups in honor of Black History Month and the 40th Anniversary of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. University of Arizona Library, Tucson.
  More info

  ;Invited: Yes;Type of Presentation: University;
• Knott, C. A. (2011, 2010-04-01). Pluck[ing] the Fruits of Science without Harming the Tree of Life": The Use of Scientific Research in Stewart L. Udall's The Quiet Crisis. Mellon/White Science and Print Culture Workshop. University of Wisconsin, Madison.
  More info

  ;Type of Presentation: University;
• Knott, C. A. (2011, 2010-06-01). Desegregating the Southern Public Library,. American Library Association. Washington, DC.
  More info

  Invited;Type of Presentation: Professional Organization;
• Knott, C. A. (2011, 2010-08-01). Collection Building from Below: The Negro Public Library in Tyler, Texas. Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing. Helsinki, Finland.
  More info

  ;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Knott, C. A. (2011, 2010-09-01). Selected Texts: The Shaping of One Racially Segregated Public Library's Collection. Library History Seminar XII. Madison, WI.
  More info

  ;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Knott, C. A. (2010, 2010-01-01). Collaborating to Build 'Colored' Libraries: The Strange Case of Booker T. Washington and Andrew Carnegie. Association for Library and Information Science Education Annual Conference. Boston.
  More info

  ;Submitted: Yes;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Knott, C. A. (2010, 2010-02-01). Preparing the Way: A Brief History of Library Education for African Americans. panel discussion organized by SIRLS student groups in honor of Black History Month and the 40th Anniversary of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. University of Arizona Library, Tucson.
  More info

  ;Invited: Yes;Type of Presentation: University;
• Knott, C. A. (2010, 2010-04-01). Pluck[ing] the Fruits of Science without Harming the Tree of Life": The Use of Scientific Research in Stewart L. Udall's The Quiet Crisis. Mellon/White Science and Print Culture Workshop. University of Wisconsin, Madison.
  More info

  ;Type of Presentation: University;
• Knott, C. A. (2010, 2010-06-01). Desegregating the Southern Public Library,. American Library Association. Washington, DC.
  More info

  Invited;Type of Presentation: Professional Organization;
• Knott, C. A. (2010, 2010-08-01). Collection Building from Below: The Negro Public Library in Tyler, Texas. Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing. Helsinki, Finland.
  More info

  ;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Knott, C. A. (2010, 2010-09-01). Selected Texts: The Shaping of One Racially Segregated Public Library's Collection. Library History Seminar XII. Madison, WI.
  More info

  ;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Knott, C. A. (2009, 2009-02-01). The Politics of Publishing and the Culture of Print: Stewart Udall's The Quiet Crisis".
  More info

  ;Type of Presentation: SIRLS research brown bag;
• Knott, C. A. (2008, 2008-09-01). Just and Intelligent Scrutiny": Eliza Atkins Gleason's Investigation of Library Services for African Americans in the 1930s. School of Library and Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison. University of Wisconsin.
  More info

  ;Type of Presentation: Invited/Plenary Speaker;
• Knott, C. A. (2008, 2008-09-01). What a Book Can (and Cannot) Do: Stewart Udall's The Quiet Crisis and its Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition. The Culture of Print in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine Conference, Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America. University of Wisconsin-Madison.
  More info

  ;Type of Presentation: Academic Conference;
• Knott, C. A. (2008, 2009-01-01). The Politics of Publishing and the Culture of Print: Stewart Udall's The Quiet Crisis. School of Information Resources and Library Science, Tucson, AZ.
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  Presented at the SIRLS Research Brown Bag get-together ;Type of Presentation: University;

Others

• Knott, C. A. (2010). History of African-Americans as Library Users and Professionals in US Libraries.
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  Invited;Full Citation: Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, Eds. Marcia Bates and Mary Niles Maack, Taylor and Francis, 2010. ;Type of Publication: Reference work;
• Knott, C. A. (2010). Virginia Lacy Jones, Sarah Alice Tyler, Andrew Carnegie, Congressional Record, Federal Register (5 separate entries).
  More info

  ;Full Citation: Oxford Companion to the Book, Oxford University Press, 2010.;Type of Publication: Reference work;