Wayne A. Wiegand, the F. William Summers Professor of Library and Information Studies Emeritus at Florida State University, will deliver the 2026 Gryphon Lecture on March 4. Sponsored annually by the Center for Children's Books, the lecture features a leading scholar in the field of youth and literature, media, and culture.
In "Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Missing Stories in American Library History," Wiegand centers the experience of Black public school librarians during the two decades following Brown v. Board of Education, including the racial violence they endured. School libraries were largely silent about school segregation. He argues that the profession’s culture of "politeness" facilitated a collective amnesia of how the school library profession avoided their commitment to intellectual freedom and non-discrimination set forth in the American Library Association's 1939 Library Bill of Rights.
"If librarianship continues to focus only on its historical haloes and overlook its historical warts, it will only perpetuate a professional ethos that makes it possible to persistently issue historically inaccurate statements," said Wiegand.
Wiegand is colloquially known as the "Dean of American Library Historians," among many other titles. He is the author of American Public School Librarianship: A History and In Silence or Indifference: Racism and Jim Crow Segregated Public School Libraries. He holds a PhD in history from Southern Illinois University, an MLS from Western Michigan University, an MA in history from University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and a BA in history from University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh.