Libraries

Sources

Public Libraries. Community tax-supported public libraries that were free and open to everyone did not take root until the nineteenth century. Most public libraries were actually book collections or private libraries open to the public. For example, the foundations of the Boston Public Library date from 1673 with the donation of Robert Keayne’s private collection of books, which was administrated by the town of Boston. In the mid eighteenth century probably no more than about ten or twelve community-owned library collections such as this were founded. However, many other kinds of libraries were founded, some private or quasi-private, some by membership only and those accessible to people who could pay a rental fee.

Demand for Books. Throughout the colonial era educated people collected books and possessed their own libraries. Most individual libraries contained less than a dozen books, but collections ranged in the thousands, such as John Adams’s library of five thousand volumes

and William Byrd II’s twenty-three cases of three thousand books. Most libraries contained Bibles, almanacs, and devotional literature, but during the eighteenth century reading interests expanded to include books on science, politics, gardening, medicine, law, surveying, agriculture, conduct and civility, grammar, textbooks, drama, poetry, history, and education. Colonial booksellers stocked imprints from Britain as well as from colonial presses, which by 1762 numbered about 40. Between 1689 and 1783 colonial presses had printed, by one estimation, 100,000 titles. The proliferation of books and other printed items and the increase in literacy in the eighteenth century meant a surge of new booksellers in the colonies. By 1750, 121 booksellers had opened shops in five American cities: Boston, Charleston, Philadelphia, New York, and Newport. Between 1761 and 1776 the number had increased to 151.

COLONIAL CIRCULATING LIBRARIES

College Libraries. College libraries built their early collections primarily through donations from philanthropists abroad and from colonial men of letters. Harvard’s library began with the bequest of John Harvard’s four hundred books. The College of William and Mary received donations from abroad and from prominent Virginia gentlemen, the largest of which was given by Gov. Francis Nicholson. In the eighteenth century, college libraries grew rapidly, though most suffered huge losses by fire or through the ravages of war. The largest of the libraries was at Harvard. From its modest beginnings in 1638 it grew to about 3,500 books in the eighteenth century before it was destroyed by fire in 1764. But two years later the library had grown from purchases and donations to 4,350 volumes, which doubled by 1783. William and Mary, Yale, and the College of New Jersey each had between 2,000 and 3,000 books before the Revolution, but many of these were destroyed during the war. King’s College and the College of Philadelphia had small libraries, but students at these colleges had access to larger libraries nearby.

Parish Libraries. Thomas Bray, an Anglican minister and commissary to Maryland’s Anglican parishes, is credited with planning the first parochial lending library. His purpose was to give poorer clergy the opportunity to educate themselves with theological, philosophical, and scientific books housed in nearby parish libraries. The first library, with 1,095 volumes, was created in 1696 in Annapolis, Maryland. With top priority given to the establishment of parish libraries by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (S.P.C.K.), more than thirty were founded in Boston, Charleston, New York, Philadelphia, and Maryland in the following three years. However, they were created mainly for clergy, and the public could use them only on a limited basis.

Subscription Libraries. Two other kinds of libraries, the subscription and circulating libraries, were more accessible to the public. The subscription libraries, also known as social libraries, were formed as clubs or voluntary associations by individuals who contributed to a general fund that was supported by annual contributions or subscriptions for the purpose of buying and maintaining books. In 1731 Benjamin Franklin founded the first of its kind, called the Library Company of Philadelphia, with a plan to have subscribers pay an initial fee of forty shillings to buy books and an additional annual fee often shillings to maintain the collection and add new books. Rules determined hours of access, fines for overdue books, limits on the number of books that could be checked out, fees for damaged books, and other collection-related concerns. Sometimes educational activities such as lecture series were offered by these libraries. By 1775 there were about seventy subscription libraries in the colonies.

Circulating Libraries. The most publically accessible library was the circulating library, a popular institution at this time in England, where there were about fifty in existence before 1762, when the first known American circulating library was organized in Annapolis, Maryland. These lending libraries were attached to booksellers’ shops or printing companies, and were places where readers rented books for a fee and for a certain period of time. Though the Annapolis library failed after a few months, eleven more successful replicas followed in urban areas such as Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Charleston before the Revolution. The number of volumes in each ranged from 150 to 3,000. They catered to men and women in trying to fill the increasing demand for literature, history, biography, and travel books. However, since both the subscription and circulating libraries cost users money, they were not available to everyone and therefore not actually public. In addition the circulating libraries were located only in cities that had booksellers and printers. At least one colony, Virginia, had neither a circulating nor a subscription library.

Sources

David Kaser, A Book for a Sixpence: The Circulating Library in America (Pittsburgh, Pa: Beta Phi Mu, 1980);

Malcolm Knowles, A History of the Adult Education Movement in the United States (Huntington, N.Y.: R. E. Krieger, 1977);

Huey B. Long, Continuing Education of Adults in Colonial America (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Publications in Continuing Education, 1976);

Jesse H. Shera, Foundations of the Public Library: The Origins of the Public Library Movement in New England, 1629-1855 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949);

Harold W. Stubblefield and Patrick Keane, Adult Education in the American Experience: From the Colonial Period to the Present (San Francisco, Cal.: Jossey-Bass, 1994).