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About Me

Jennifer Burek Pierce is Associate Professor in the School of Library & Information Science at the University of Iowa, and by courtesy, is jointly appointed with the University of Iowa’s Center for the Book.

She writes about publishing trends and their implications for readers and libraries, both past and present. How are books promoted and shared? How are communities of readers understood in light of books and materials made available to them and made by them?

Books, games, and toys for young readers are of particular interest.  Her 2016 essay, “The Reign of Children”: The Role of Games and Toys in American Public Libraries, 1876-1925,” published in Information & Culture, has been awarded the Davis Article Award by the Library History Round Table of the American Library Association.  A 2013 essay discusses developments in e-books for children.  Fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society and Winterthur Museum, Libraries & Garden funded her study of children’s books and related materials. She is currently delving into the online community surrounding the novels of John Green and the Vlogbrothers videos that he and his brother, Hank Green, began producing in 2007.

Her books include What Adolescents Ought to Know: Sexual Health Texts in Early 20th Century America (UMass Press, 2011) (link is external) and Sex, Brains, and Video Games: Information & Inspiration for Youth Services Librarians (ALA Editions, 2017).

She developed the Youth Matters column for American Libraries magazine and has also written for The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Paris Review’s Daily at https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/08/28/reading-eating-paris/

Recent Publications

Forthcoming.  Making the Story Real:  Readers, Fans, and the Novels of John Green in The Edinburgh History of Reading, ME Hammond & J. Rose, eds.  Edinburgh University Press.

With L. Mattock and C. Theisen. A Case for Digital Squirrels: Using and Preserving YouTube for Popular Culture Research. First Monday. 23.1 (January 2018) at https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/8163/6625

“Baby Books as Testimonials: Young Lives, Complex Stories,” The Ephemera Journal2, Summer 2017: 23-5.

“The Reign of Children”: The Role of Games and Toys in American Public Libraries, 1876-1925. Information & Culture. 51.3, Summer 2016.

With M. Pierce. “Sex,” in Miseducation: A History of Ignorance Making in America and Beyond. A.J. Angulo, ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016, 34-51.

With M. Smith. “Reading Oliver Optic’s Young America for Perspective on Technological and Cultural Change,” Annual Review of Cultural Heritage Informatics, Vol. 3 University of South Carolina, School of Library and Information Science and AltaMira Press, 2016): 203-27.

“Knit and the World Knits with You”: Newspapers and Participatory Culture in the Years Leading to World War I, Annual Review of Cultural Heritage Informatics, Vol. 2, S.K. Hastings, ed., (University of South Carolina, School of Library and Information Science and AltaMira Press, 2014): 73-83

E-books for Young Readers: A Historical Overview of Interdisciplinary Literatures, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 51.1 (Spring 2013): 105- 29 at http://ir.uiowa.edu/slis_pubs/10/

What Adolescents Ought to Know: Sexual Health Texts in the Early Twentieth Century (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011).

Media Coverage

http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2018/05/library-history-round-table-lhrt-delighted-announce-presentation-2018-donald

Social Media

@TheTobstersMom

Country Focus

Expertise by Geography

United States

Expertise by Chronology

20th century, 21st century

Expertise by Topic

Book History, Children & Youth, Libraries & Archives