The Socio-historical plot of the founding of the Sarmiento Birthplace Library in San Juan (Argentina), in 1910.

Abstract

The following work proposes a historical reconstruction of Casa Natal de Sarmiento’s (Sarmiento’s Birthplace) Library in the context of its foundation in 1910. The objective of this study is to reconstruct the history of its origins at the beginning of the 20th century. Within the reference topic, the social context and the sources of analysis have been interpreted under the aid of microhistory (inductive method) and the conception of mentalities. This way, an approach to the burocratic field is identified which is complemented by the conceptual corpus of the history of the book, the editing and the reading in Argentina. As a correlary, a socio-historical analysis was obtained. This put the figure of Domingo F. Sarmiento and what was understood by these types of libraries into social focus. Finally, the present article exhibits part of the results of a bachelor’s degree thesis and constitutes the first progress exclusively dedicated to the topic.