Wayne August Wiegand (born April 15, 1946) is an American library historian, author, and academic. Wiegand retired as F. William Summers Professor of Library and Information Studies and Professor of American Studies at Florida State University in 2010.
Early life and education Wiegand received a BA in history at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh (1968), an MA in history at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (1970), an MLS at Western Michigan University and a Ph.D. in history at Southern Illinois University (1974).
Career Wiegand was Librarian at Urbana College in Ohio (1974-1976). He taught at the College of Library Science at the University of Kentucky from 1976 through 1986. From 1987-2002 he was a professor at the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison he served as cofounder and Co-Director of the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America (a joint program of the University and the Wisconsin Historical Society established in 1992). He served as William Rand Kenan Jr. Visiting Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and as Fellow in the UW–Madison's Institute for Research in the Humanities. He was an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society and a Spencer Foundation Fellow. At Florida State University, Tallahassee he was F. William Summers Professor of Library and Information Studies and professor of American studies, 2003—2010. Between 2004 and 2007, he served as Executive Director of Beta Phi Mu (the International Library and Information Science Honor Society). Wiegand co-organized the Florida Book Awards as a member of the faculty of the FSU Program in American & Florida Studies. For the academic year 2009-2010, he shared time between Florida State University in Tallahassee and the Winter Park Institute of Rollins College, where he was "Scholar in Residence." In 2011, he received a Short-Term Fellowship from the New York Public Library. In 2024 the Library History Round Table awarded Wiegand the Distinguished Service in Library History Award which honors the career of a person who has a lifetime of scholarship and service in the field of library history.
Writing From 2008-2009, he had a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to write a book entitled Part of Our Lives: A People's History of the American Public Library, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2015. Notable among library histories for its emphasis on user experience and the role of libraries as community institutions, the book has been described as a "landmark" in library history marked by "impassioned advocacy" and "solid scholarship". The book precedes a documentary on the American public library "Free for All: The American Public Library" (released in 2025) by independent film makers. From January to May 2017, he was Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library of Congress's John W. Kluge Center, researching a book on the history of American public school librarianship. It later appeared as American Public School Librarianship: A History (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021). In spring 2018, Louisiana State University Press published The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South: Civil Rights and Local Activism, a book he coauthored with his wife, Shirley A. Wiegand. It was awarded the 2019 Eliza Atkins Gleason Book Award by the Library History Round Table of the American Library Association. In September, 2024, the University Press of Mississippi published In Silence or Indifference: Racism and Jim Crow Segregated Public School Libraries. Wiegand has been a forceful voice demanding that "librarianship engage with and reflect on its own historical amnesia, and process the missing information into its collective memory so the profession no longer perpetuates self-serving historical myths." His next book-length project is tentatively entitled Soul of the City: A People's History of the San Francisco Public Library (expected 2029).
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