In this text, Edwards analyses the contributions of a number of Aboriginals that were instrumental in articulating their peoples' concerns. He discusses the challenges and contributions made by such people as Peter Jones, George Copway, Charles Cooke, Dr. Oronhyaetkha, and Edward Ahenakew. Edwards' text provides compelling background to contemporary literacy and print culture issues. Paper Talk provides an excellent initial ... Read morecontribution to a field deserving increased scholarly and public attention.
SHARP News
The history of the book in Canadian Aboriginal communities is becoming a subject of concentrated interest...Paper Talk is an original and fine addition to this ongoing discussion....Paper Talk provides a cohesive and richly detailed narrative that outline general patterns among Aboriginal people combined with illustrations of specific examples in local contexts. Edwards balances solid primary research with careful integration of published works in the field. The book will be of interest to scholars of both Aboriginal peoples and the history of the book.
Papers Of The Bibliographical Society Of Canada
Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.
CHOICE
Covers the largely untold story of the introduction of print to Canadian aboriginal peoples by missionaries as a "civilizing" influence. Later, in the early twentieth century libraries were part of residential schools and the appendices include fascinating lists of approved books. Also documented are the initial efforts to establish public libraries in native communities, a void that remains today.
Vancouver Public Library Online
This is a history of libraries and print culture and their combined impact on Aboriginal people in Canada. There’s even an interesting piece on school libraries and their adequacies and deficiencies in the years before 1960. A scholarly and interesting read.
The Nipawin Journal
Paper Talk is an almost ideal example of this phenomenon of academic scrutiny supporting aboriginal values. It takes a seemingly peripheral subject - the history of libraries in aboriginal-European relations - and brings it to bear on the larger story with solid research, inexorable logic and often devastating conclusions.
Globe and Mail
A scholar of library and information science, Canadian studies, and native studies, Edwards traces the introduction of books and print culture to Aboriginal people in Canada from the first endeavors of missionaries in the 1820s to the opening of the first official public library for natives. The overarching question he asks is what the motivations and effects were of introducing book literacy into Aboriginal cultures where orality and other variant forms of literacy already existed and had served the people well for many generations.
Reference and Research Book News
...Edwards' prose is clear and efficient...Edwards's extensive notes often provide lucid outlines of scholarly controversies, and his bibliography will tempt a variety of readers....All the current stakeholders—Canadians, librarians, cultural historians, and, not least, politicians and Indigenous peoples engaged in a digital age in which both the promise of access and the expense of ownership have risen dramatically—ought to read this learned and passionate book.
Information & Culture, Vol. 41, No. 3
...fascinating.... this provocative, well-written, well-edited, and thoroughly documented study deserves a place on the "must read" list of any academic librarian interested in the history of libraries, the social implications of Western notions of literacy, and/or the provision of library services to aboriginal peoples. Brendan Edwards and Scarecrow Press are to be commended for making this important study available...
College & Research Libraries, Vol. 68, No. 1 (January 2007)
This book...is a wonderful read and a valuable addition to Canadian book and library history....Edward's works are informative histories that break new ground and cover more than a century of varying kinds of library service and print culture among Aboriginals across Canada.
Libraries Today Blog
The information in this book is excellent and important...
Project Muse
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