Libraries. “Libraries have improved the general conversation of the Americans,” Benjamin
Franklin observed in his autobiography, “and perhaps contributed in some degree to the stand so generally made throughout the colonies in defense of their privileges.” Franklin was in a good position to know. In 1731 he had organized the Library Company of
Philadelphia, a joint‐stock venture in which stockholders pooled their money to acquire a collection of books that all could borrow. It differed from institutional predecessors like the Harvard College Library, which originated in 1636 with a gift of three hundred mostly theological books, and the seventy religious libraries set up by the Anglican clergyman Thomas Bray between 1695 and 1704 to combat heresy and induce English clergy to emigrate to the colonies. Franklin's library avoided religious subjects, favoring travel, philosophy, and biography.
For the next century the Library Company became the model for other types of social libraries, including athenaeums (which added newspapers and periodicals), “subscription” libraries (where patrons paid a fee to draw from collections others owned), “mercantile” libraries (created by young urban clerks for self‐improvement), and “mechanics” libraries (often funded by capitalists to improve employee efficiency).
As
literacy increased, as
education became compulsory, and as improved technologies reduced the cost of printed materials, the model shifted. In 1854, Boston opened a “public library” funded by local tax dollars. Democracy required an informed citizenry, founders argued, and making “good books” accessible to the public was a civic responsibility.
To encourage uniform library practices, Melvil Dewey in 1876 helped organize the American Library Association (ALA), published his decimal classification system for library collections, began editing a new periodical entitled
Library Journal, and started a library supplies company. In 1887, Dewey opened the world's first library school at New York's Columbia College (where, on the otherwise all‐male campus, seventeen of the first twenty students were women). By 1900, Dewey had cemented into library practice his own brand of library science, which emphasized efficient service and management and delegated to other professionals the authority to identify the “good books” libraries would collect.
By that time, the steel magnate Andrew
Carnegie had articulated a philosophy that challenged all wealthy Americans to support self‐improvement institutions like libraries. Between 1890 and 1919, Carnegie himself contributed $45,000,000 to construct 108 academic and 1,679 public library buildings. To qualify, communities had to provide a suitable site and promise annual support of 10 percent of the construction grant.
During
World War I, an ALA Library War Service Committee supervised two fund‐raising and three book‐collecting campaigns that eventually netted five million dollars and ten million books and magazines, most of which went to thirty‐six training camps in the United States and thousands of mobile library stations in Europe.
By the time the war ended, the public library had matured into a civic reading institution staffed mostly by women, who found in librarianship one of the few professions that welcomed them. But except for children's literature—an area of collection development for which their gender “naturally” qualified them—librarians continued to look to experts in the academy and literary establishment for guidance in identifying “good books.” Despite librarians' best efforts, however, public library users were much more interested in popular reading.
Academic libraries experienced a different history. In antebellum America they consisted mostly of donated and carefully guarded books; the classical curriculum did not require library use. After 1876, however, academic libraries responded to the growing emphasis on research and graduate work by increasing collections, extending hours, and improving access and bibliographic control. A second burst of growth occurred after
World War II as higher education expanded dramatically.
About midcentury the federal government greatly increased its presence in American library development. The Library Services Act of 1956 funded extension services to rural people through state library agencies. The 1964 Library Services and Construction Act helped thousands of public and academic libraries increase collections and construct new buildings. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965) put libraries in thousands of American public schools.
At century's end, the fourteen thousand public, eighty thousand school, five thousand academic, and ten thousand special libraries maintained by private and public‐sector institutions combined to make the library a ubiquitous site for the nation's diverse reading communities. By that time, most libraries were following institutions like the
Library of Congress and the New York Public Library and adopting newer electronic technologies. Many libraries automated routine work like circulation, replaced card catalogs with computerized access to their holdings, and tapped into huge databases that vastly expanded the information and bibliographic resources available to their patrons.
See also
Philanthropy and Philanthropic Foundations.
Bibliography
Jesse H. Shera , Foundations of the Public Library: The Origins of the Public Library Movement in New England, 1629–1855, 1949.
Jane Aikin Rosenberg , The Nation's Great Library: Herbert Putnam and the Library of Congress, 1899–1939, 1993.
Joanne E. Passet , Cultural Crusaders: Women Librarians in the American West, 1900–1917, 1994.
Abigail A. Van Slyck , Free to All: Carnegie Libraries and American Culture, 1890–1920, 1995.
Louise S. Robbins , Censorship and the American Library: The American Library Association's Response to Threats to Intellectual Freedom, 1939–1969, 1996.
Wayne A. Wiegand , Irrepressible Reformer: A Biography of Melvil Dewey, 1996.
Wayne A. Wiegand
