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

利用图书馆的历史方法来经济和社会现象，这个项目解决了在英国工业革命的历史编纂的一个中心辩论：创新是否发生作为国家（阿什沃思）的监管行动的结果，或通过个人的创造性反应与启蒙运动（Mokyr）相关联的新思想。它探讨了雅各布的断言，工业化是由“机械识字的企业家”谁是精通最新的科学知识（2007年，第207页），评估在何种程度上自愿会员图书馆通过提供书籍和知情的谈话培养科学文化。它还询问了图书馆在多大程度上帮助了整个社会规模的读者为自己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）在促进商业网络中的作用，但对城市的工业和工业家的研究很少。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，同时扩展早期关于城市科学文化的工作，主要集中在哲学和科学社会（Kitteringham）。该项目利用雅典娜博物馆（利物浦）的原始资料，如会议记录、会员记录、账目、目录和独特的当代小册子收藏。这些材料将用于恢复雅典娜博物馆通过提供自然哲学、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来促进工业创新的程度。对雅典娜神庙的书籍和成员的详细考虑将在社会和文化方面得到扩展。（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神庙提供的精英视角）和地理位置（通过将利物浦的海上经济与曼彻斯特、哈利法克斯和博尔顿等工厂城镇进行比较，该项目扩大了由亚洲人权委员会资助的十八世纪在线图书馆（E-CLO; www.example.com）开发的数据和数字方法www.c18librariesonline.org，包括重点关注会员记录、小册子和书籍以及旁注。

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.