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

利用图书馆历史方法研究经济和社会现象，该项目解决了英国工业革命史学中的一个核心争论：创新是国家监管行动的结果（Ashworth），还是通过个人对与启蒙运动相关的新思想的创造性反应（Mokyr）。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“机械文化企业家”领导的（2007年，第207页），评估了自愿会员图书馆通过提供书籍和知情对话促进科学文化的程度。它还询问了图书馆在多大程度上帮助社会各阶层的读者自行协商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经验。虽然哈格蒂使用视觉分析来评估文化机构（包括利物浦图书馆，一个成立于1758年的早期订阅图书馆）在促进商业网络方面的作用，但该市的工业和实业家却很少得到研究。该项目旨在建立利物浦制造商的身份，社会网络和知识利益，同时扩展城市科学文化的早期工作，主要关注哲学和科学社团（Kitteringham）。该项目利用了雅典娜博物馆（利物浦）的原始材料，如会议记录、会员记录、账目、目录和当代小册子的独特收藏。通过提供自然哲学、数学、力学和化学方面的书籍，以及通过会员帮助促进的商业网络，这些材料将用于恢复雅典娜博物馆促进工业创新的程度。对雅典娜博物馆的书籍和会员的详细考虑将从社会（通过考虑利物浦的工人阶级阅读和知识交流场所以及雅典娜博物馆提供的精英视角）和地理（通过将利物浦的海洋经济与曼彻斯特、哈利法克斯和博尔顿等工厂城镇，以及/或新独立的美国早期制造业中心进行比较）两方面进行扩展。该项目扩展了由美国人权委员会资助的十八世纪在线图书馆（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、书籍和旁注。

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.