Citizens of Cossitt: Southern Publics, Then and Now

Abstract This essay uses the history of Cossitt Library—from its founding in 1893 to its renovation and reopening in 2023—to explore how the Southern public library has faced, and continues to face, unique opportunities and challenges for public humanities projects. As a scholar-in-residence at Cossitt from 2020 to 2022, I worked alongside the branch manager, staff librarians, community outreach specialists, local arts organizations, and special collections managers to document the history of Cossitt’s role in the city’s civic life and to create policies and programming that encouraged many different constituencies to see the space as their own. It offers an example of where the qualitative research skills of a humanities scholar can impact both large-scale and targeted public humanities projects.