The 'Mechanically Literate Entrepreneur' Reconsidered: Subscription Libraries and the Industrial Revolution

这个项目利用图书馆历史的方法来研究经济和社会现象，解决了英国工业革命史学中的一个核心辩论：创新是由于国家的监管行动(阿什沃斯)还是由于个人对与启蒙运动相关的新思想的创造性反应而发生的(莫基尔)。它探讨了雅各布的断言，即工业化是由精通最新科学知识的“机械知识企业家”领导的(2007年，第207页)，评估了自愿加入图书馆通过提供书籍和知情对话在多大程度上促进了科学文化。它还询问图书馆在多大程度上帮助社会规模的读者为自己谈判快速工业化对生活条件、性别和政治的不同影响。该项目进一步关注利物浦的工业体验。虽然哈格蒂使用视觉分析来评估文化机构(包括成立于1758年的早期订阅图书馆利物浦图书馆)在促进商业网络方面的作用，但对这座城市的工业和实业家的研究很少。该项目旨在建立利物浦制造商的身份、社交网络和知识兴趣，同时扩展早期主要关注哲学和科学社会的城市科学文化工作(Kitteringham)。该项目利用了雅典(利物浦)保存的原始材料，如会议纪要、会员记录、账目、目录和独特的当代小册子收藏。通过提供自然哲学、数学、力学和化学方面的书籍，以及通过成员有助于促进的商业网络，这些材料将被用来恢复雅典在促进工业创新方面所起的作用。对雅典图书馆的书籍和成员的详细考虑将在社会上(考虑利物浦的工人阶级阅读和智力交流场所，以及雅典图书馆提供的精英视角)和地理上(通过将利物浦的海基经济与曼彻斯特、哈利法克斯和博尔顿等磨坊城镇和/或新独立的美国的早期制造业中心进行比较)来扩展。该项目扩展了由AHRC资助的18世纪图书馆在线(E-CLO；www.c18Librariesonline.org)开发的数据和数字方法，包括关注会员记录、小册子、书籍和其他内容。

Utilising a library history approach to economic and social phenomena, this project addresses a central debate in the historiography of the industrial revolution in Britain: whether innovation occurred as a result of regulatory action by the state (Ashworth) or through individuals' creative response to new ideas associated with the Enlightenment (Mokyr). It probes Jacob's assertion that industrialisation was led by the 'mechanically literate entrepreneur' who was well versed in the latest scientific knowledge (2007, p.207), assessing the extent to which voluntary membership libraries fostered scientific culture through the provision of books and informed conversation. It also asks how far libraries helped readers across the social scale negotiate for themselves the varying impacts of rapid industrialisation on living conditions, gender and politics. The project has a further focus on the industrial experience in Liverpool. While Haggerty uses visual analytics to assess the role of cultural institutions (including the Liverpool Library, an earlier subscription library founded in 1758) in facilitating mercantile networks, the city's industries and industrialists have been very little researched. The project aims to establish the identity, social networks and intellectual interests of Liverpool's manufacturers while extending earlier work on the city's scientific culture which focused primarily on philosophical and scientific societies (Kitteringham). The project utilises source material held in the Athenaeum (Liverpool), such as minute books, membership records, accounts, catalogues and a unique collection of contemporary pamphlets. This material will be used to recover the extent to which the Athenaeum served to promote industrial innovation, both through the provision of books on natural philosophy, mathematics, mechanics and chemistry, and through the business networking that membership helped to facilitate. Detailed consideration of the Athenaeum's books and members will be extended both socially (by considering working-class venues for reading and intellectual exchange in Liverpool alongside the elite perspective offered by the Athenaeum) and geographically (by comparing Liverpool's sea-based economy to mill towns such as Manchester, Halifax and Bolton, and/or to early manufacturing hubs in the newly independent United States).The project expands on data and digital methods developed by the AHRC-funded Eighteenth-Century Libraries Online (E-CLO; www.c18librariesonline.org), including a focus on membership records, pamphlets and books and marginalia.