For this installment of our weekly book reviews from Booklist, the American Library Association’s nationally distributed book and media review publication, we have Susan Maguire’s review of “Breaking Barriers: A Librarian’s Story of Changing Times” by Robert Wedgeworth, first published July 8, 2026, in Booklist Online.
Enjoy.
“Breaking Barriers: A Librarian’s Story of Changing Times”
By Robert Wedgeworth. June 2026. 172p. Bloomsbury Libraries Unlimited. (9798216196143).
“This guy’s a really great ambassador for the profession,” state Wayne A. Wiegand and William F. Summers in their foreword to Wedgeworth’s memoir, and the following pages prove them right. He begins his account of his library career with the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, where Wedgeworth worked at the Library 21 exhibit, showcasing what the future of libraries could be. He would continue to be on the cusp of innovations in library technology, introducing automated acquisitions to the Brown University Library, experiencing the first IFLA listserv in the mid-1990s, studying the transition from traditional library schools to iSchools while earning his PhD at Rutgers, where he enrolled at age 75. Throughout his life, he also broke racial barriers, growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, which was “segregated by custom, not by law,” as the only Black student at Wabash College in 1955, as the only Black member of the professional staff at Brown, and as the first Black executive director of the American Library Association in 1972. Wedgeworth also faced challenges in the field that feel familiar—threatened slashes to federal funding and reduced membership in ALA, to name just two. His clear-eyed insights will resonate with library workers today. “Breaking Barriers” is a must-read for library leaders and readers taking a big-picture look at the field.— Susan Maguire
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