Samantha Baine
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The Pack Horse Library Project Webliography


Watch a short introduction to the Pack Horse Librarians:

Learn more through the links below:

Horse-Riding Librarians Were the Great Depression's Bookmobiles
The Smithsonian offers a great introduction to the Pack Horse Librarians of the Great Depression, founded from the Works Progress Administration of the New Deal. The women-led initiative brought books to Kentuckians living in remote areas from 1935 to 1943.

WPA Travelling Libraries Speech from 1937
This speech shows that, although the Pack Horse Library Project was short lived, the impact it made to the Appalachian region of Kentucky it serviced was great. These women delivered around 33,000 books and magazines to nearly 57,000 families at this time. Without their hard work, literacy would have been lost in the mountains.

The Pack Horse Librarians Of Eastern Kentucky by NPR
A 2018 Interview with Mary Ruth Shuler Dieter, an original "book woman" and descendants of other Pack Horse Librarians, featuring authors and librarians knowledgeable on the subject.

The Pack Horse Librarians of Eastern Kentucky
Blue Ridge County's article gives a brief overview of some of the specific duties of the librarians, including repairing worn out materials and crafting scrapbooks when they didn't have enough books to circulate. The author even goes so far as to travel the same path as the Pack Horse Librarians through Cut Shin Creek.

Packhorse Librarian Album, 1936-1939
The Kentucky State Digital Archives has collected over 50 original photographs of The Pack Horse Library Project, including Eleanor Roosevelt visiting with a Pack Horse Librarian in Kentucky.

Check out these fiction books on the subject at your local library:

  • The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson (Historical)

  • The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes (Historical)

  • Carry the World by Susan Fanetti (Romance)

  • Along a Storied Trail by Ann H. Gabhart (Romance)

  • Wonderland Creek by Lynn Austin (Christian)

  • The Librarian of Boone's Hollow by Kim Vogel Sawyer (Christian)

  • Evie and the Pack-Horse Librarians by Laurel Beckley (Fantasy)

  • Down Cut Shin Creek by Kathi Appelt & Jeanne Cannella Schmitzer (Juvenile)

  • That Book Woman by Heather Henson (Children's Picture Book)

  • Books by Horseback by Emma Carlson Berne (Children's Picture Book)

Original newspaper clipping from the Medford Mail Tribune, dated December 11, 1936

Say Hi: sbaine@vols.utk.edu

Created on July 14, 2021