A public library is a library, most often a lending library, that is accessible by the general public and is usually funded from public sources, such as taxes. It is operated by librarians and library paraprofessionals, who are also civil servants.
Public libraries are supported by taxes, are open to all who wish to access the library collection, and do not charge money for access to the library collection.
Public libraries exist in many countries across the world and are often considered an essential part of having an educated and literate population. Public libraries are distinct from research libraries, school libraries, academic libraries in other states and other special libraries. Their mandate is to serve the general public's information needs rather than the needs of a particular school, institution, or research population. Public libraries also provide free services such as preschool story times to encourage early literacy among children. They also provide a quiet study and learning areas for students and professionals and foster the formation of book clubs to encourage the appreciation of literature by the young and adults. Public libraries typically allow users to borrow books and other materials outside the library premises temporarily, usually for a given period of time. They also have non-circulating reference collections and provide computer and Internet access to their patrons.
The culmination of centuries of advances in the printing press, moveable type, paper, ink, publishing, and distribution, combined with an ever-growing information-oriented middle class, increased commercial activity and consumption, new radical ideas, massive population growth and higher literacy rates forged the public library into the form that it is today.
Public access to books is not new. Romans made scrolls in dry rooms available to patrons of the baths, and tried with some success to establish libraries within the empire. Public libraries existed in the Roman Empire by the 1st century BC.
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In the middle of the 19th century, the push for truly public libraries, paid for by taxes and run by the state gained force. Matthew Battles states that:
It was in these years of class conflict and economic terror that the public library movement swept through Britain, as the nation's progressive elite recognized that the light of cultural and intellectual energy was lacking in the lives of commoners.
Public libraries were often started with a donation, or were bequeathed to parishes, churches, schools or towns. These social and institutional libraries formed the base of many academic and public library collections of today.
The establishment of circulating libraries in the 18th century by booksellers and publishers provided a means of gaining profit and creating social centers within the community. The circulating libraries not only provided a place to sell books, but also a place to lend books for a price. These circulating libraries provided a variety of materials including the increasingly popular novels. Although the circulating libraries filled an important role in society, members of the middle and upper classes often looked down upon these libraries that regularly sold material from their collections and provided materials that were less sophisticated.
Circulating libraries also charged a subscription fee. However, these fees were set to entice their patrons, providing subscriptions on a yearly, quarterly or monthly basis, without expecting the subscribers to purchase a share in the circulating library. This helped patrons who could not afford to buy books, to be able to borrow books to read, and then return. This also created a more popular demand, as book fees were growing, and more books were being copied. Circulating libraries were very popular; the first one was located in 1725, in Edinburgh, Scotland, by Allan Ramsay.
Circulating libraries were not exclusively lending institutions and often provided a place for other forms of commercial activity, which may or may not be related to print. This was necessary because the circulating libraries did not generate enough funds through subscription fees collected from its borrowers. As a commerce venture, it was important to consider the contributing factors such as other goods or services available to the subscribers.
History
Early history
The first libraries consisted of archives of the earliest form of writing – the clay tablets in cuneiform script discovered in temple rooms in Sumer, some dating back to 2600 BC. They appeared five thousand years ago in Southwest Asia's Fertile Crescent, an area that ran from Mesopotamia to the Nile in Africa. Known as the cradle of civilization, the Fertile Crescent was likewise the birthplace of writing, sometime before 3000 BC. These first libraries, which mainly consisted of the records of commercial transactions or inventories, mark the end of prehistory and the start of history.
Things were very similar in the government and temple records on papyrus of Ancient Egypt. The earliest discovered private archives were kept at Ugarit; besides correspondence and inventories, texts of myths may have been standardized practice-texts for teaching new scribes.
Persia at the time of the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC) was home to some outstanding libraries that served two main functions: keeping the records of administrative documents (e.g., transactions, governmental orders, and budget allocation within and between the Satrapies and the central ruling State) and collection of resources on different sets of principles e.g. medical science, astronomy, history, geometry and philosophy.
A public library was established in Rome by the first century BC, in the Atrium Libertatis (see History of libraries § Classical period and Gaius Asinius Pollio § Later life). However, the first major public library is said to have been established in Athens by Pisistratus in the sixth century BC (see Library of Alexandria § Historical background), and by the end of the Hellenistic period, public libraries are said to have been widespread in the Eastern Mediterranean (see Library of Alexandria § In antiquity).
Historian Yahya of Antioch (d. 1066) reported that the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah (r. 996–1021) financed and established libraries open to the public, where anyone, even the simple non-specialists, could choose whatever books they wanted and have them copied by public scribes, free of charge. However, as with many of his other decisions, Al-Hakim later ordered this policy to be reversed.
The Malatestiana Library (Biblioteca Malatestiana) in Cesena, Italy, is regarded as the first community-run public library in Europe. The building and creation of the library was commissioned by the Lord of Cesena, Malatesta Novello. At Novello's direction, the books were owned by the commune of Cesena, not the monastery or the family. It was established in 1447 with the building completed in 1452 and provided secular and religious works in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew and was institutionally open to all members of the public as a civic, non-monastic library. The library was organized as a chained library, with each manuscript fixed to its desk or bookcase by a metal chain, and the collection was for consultation on site rather than for lending.
Another early library that allowed access to the public was Kalendars or Kalendaries, a brotherhood of clergy and laity who were attached to the Church of All-Halloween or All Saints in Bristol, England. Records show that in 1464, provision was made for a library to be erected in the house of the Kalendars. A reference is made to a deed of that date by which it was "appointed that all who wish to enter for the sake of instruction shall have 'free access and recess' at certain times."
In 1598, Francis Trigge established a library in a room above St. Wulfram's Church in Grantham, Lincolnshire and decreed that it should be open to the clergy and residents of the surrounding neighborhood. Some scholars consider this library an "ancestor" to public libraries since its patrons did not need to belong to an existing organization like a church or college to use it. However, all the books in the library were chained to stalls, hence its name: the Francis Trigge Chained Library.
In the early years of the 17th century, many famous collegiate and town libraries were founded in England. Norwich City library was established in 1608 (six years after Thomas Bodley founded the Bodleian Library, which was open to the "whole republic of the learned") and Chetham's Library in Manchester, which claims to be the oldest public library in the English-speaking world, opened in 1653.
Biblioteca Palafoxiana, a 17th‑century baroque library in Puebla, Mexico, is considered the first public library in the Americas and recognized by UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. Founded in 1646 by Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, it began with his donation of 5,000 books to be accessible to all. The current hall, completed in 1773, now preserves over 41,000–45,000 volumes and manuscripts from the 15th to 20th centuries, including incunabula like the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle, the oldest text in the library.
In his seminal work Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque (1644) the French scholar and librarian Gabriel Naudé asserted that only three libraries in all Europe granted in his times regular access to every scholar, namely the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome, and the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Enlightenment-era libraries
At the start of the 18th century, libraries were becoming increasingly public and were more frequently lending libraries. The 18th century saw the switch from closed parochial libraries to lending libraries. Before this time, public libraries were parochial in nature, and libraries frequently chained their books to desks. Libraries also were not uniformly open to the public.
In Britain, Chetham's Library, established in Manchester in 1653, was the only important library that was fully and freely accessible to the public. In 1715 a small theological library was founded for general use at St Peter's Church, Liverpool, although an inventory of the church's goods taken in 1893 recorded that the library's existence was not widely known amongst Liverpool people and that there was a misconception amongst parishioners that it was for the exclusive use of the clergy. The Chesshyre Library in Halton, Cheshire, was founded as a free public library in 1733 for all "divines of the Church of England or other gentlemen or persons of letters", but it was limited to just 422 volumes of mostly ecclesiastical and legal works.
In Germany, there was another occurrence of an accessible public library. The Ducal Library at Wolfenbüttel was open "every weekday morning and afternoon" and loaned its books to the public. Between 1714 and 1799, the library loaned 31,485 books to 1,648 different users. Claude Sallier, the French philologist and churchman, operated an early form of a public library in the town of Saulieu, France, from 1737 to 1750. He wished to make culture and learning accessible to all people. The Załuski Library (Polish: Biblioteka Załuskich, Latin: Bibliotheca Zalusciana) was built in Warsaw 1747–1795 by Józef Andrzej Załuski and his brother, Andrzej Stanisław Załuski, both Roman Catholic bishops. The library was open to the public and was the first Polish public library, the biggest in Poland, and one of the earliest public libraries in Europe.
The British Museum, founded in 1753, contained over 50,000 books, but the national library was not open to the public or even to most of the population. Access to the museum depended on passes, for which there was sometimes a waiting period of three to four weeks. Moreover, the library was not open for browsing. Once a pass to the library had been issued, the reader was taken on a tour of the library. Many readers complained that the tour was much too short. Similarly, the Bibliothèque du Roi in Paris required a potential visitor to be "carefully screened" and, even after this stipulation was met, the library was open only two days per week and only to view medallions and engravings, not books.
Subscription libraries
Commercial subscription libraries
The increase in secular literature at this time encouraged the spread of lending libraries, especially commercial subscription libraries. Commercial subscription libraries began when booksellers began renting out extra copies of books in the mid-18th century. Steven Fischer estimates that in 1790, there were "about six hundred rental and lending libraries, with a clientele of some fifty thousand." The mid-to-late 18th century saw a wave of feminine reading as novels became more and more popular. Novels, while frowned upon in society, were extremely popular. In England, there were many who lamented at the "villainous profane and obscene books", and the opposition to the circulating library, on moral grounds, persisted well into the 19th century. Still, many establishments must have circulated many times the number of novels as of any other genre.
In 1797, Thomas Wilson wrote in The Use of Circulating Libraries: "Consider that for a successful circulating library, the collection must contain 70% fiction". However, the overall percentage of novels mainly depended on the proprietor of the circulating library. While some circulating libraries were almost completely novels, others had less than 10% of their overall collection in the form of novels. The national average start of the 20th century hovered around novels comprising about 20% of the total collection. Novels varied from other types of books in many ways. They were read primarily for enjoyment instead of for study. They did not provide academic knowledge or spiritual guidance; thus, they were read quickly and far fewer times than other books. These were the perfect books for commercial subscription libraries to lend. Since books were read for pure enjoyment rather than for scholarly work, books needed to become both cheaper and smaller. Small duodecimo editions of books were preferred to the large folio editions. Folio editions were read at a desk, while the small duodecimo editions could be easily read like the paperbacks of today. The French journalist Louis-Sébastien Mercier wrote that the books were also separated into parts so that readers could rent a section of the book for some hours instead of a full day. This allowed more readers could have access to the same work at the same time, making it more profitable for the circulating libraries.
Much like paperbacks of today, many of the novels in circulating libraries were unbound. At this period of time, many people chose to bind their books in leather. Many circulating libraries skipped this process. Circulating libraries were not in the business of preserving books; their owners wanted to lend books as many times as they possibly could. Circulating libraries have ushered in a completely new way of reading. Reading was no longer simply an academic pursuit or an attempt to gain spiritual guidance. Reading became a social activity. Many circulating libraries were attached to the shops of milliners or drapers. They served as much for social gossip and the meeting of friends as coffee shops do today.
Another factor in the growth of subscription libraries was the increasing cost of books. In the last two decades of the century, especially, prices were practically doubled, so that a quarto work cost a guinea, an octavo 10 shillings or 12 shillings, and a duodecimo cost 4 shillings per volume. Price apart, moreover, books were difficult to procure outside London since local booksellers could not afford to carry large stocks. Commercial libraries, since they were usually associated with booksellers and also since they had a greater number of patrons, were able to accumulate greater numbers of books. The United Public Library was said to have a collection of some 52,000 volumes – twice as many as any private-subscription library in the country at that period. These libraries, since they functioned as a business, also lent books to non-subscribers on a per-book system.
Despite the existence of these subscription libraries, they were only accessible to those who could afford the fees and to those with time to read during the daylight. As stated by James Van Horn Melton, "one should not overstate the extent to which lending libraries 'democratized' reading" since "they were probably less important for creating new readers than for enabling those who already read to read more." For many people, these libraries, though more accessible than libraries such as the British Library, were still largely an institution for the middle and upper classes.
Private-subscription libraries
Private-subscription libraries functioned in much the same manner as commercial subscription libraries, though they varied in many important ways. One of the most popular versions of the private-subscription library was the "gentlemen only" library. The gentlemen's subscription libraries, sometimes known as proprietary libraries, were nearly all organized on a common pattern. Membership was restricted to the proprietors or shareholders, and ranged from a dozen or two to between four and five hundred. The entrance fee, i.e. the purchase price of a share, was in early days usually a guinea, but rose sharply as the century advanced, often reaching four or five guineas during the French wars; the annual subscription, during the same period, rose from about six shillings to ten shillings or more. The book-stock was, by modern standards, small (Liverpool, with over 8,000 volumes in 1801, seems to have been the largest), and was accommodated, at the outset, in makeshift premises—very often over a bookshop, with the bookseller acting as librarian and receiving an honorarium for his pains.
The Liverpool subscription library was a gentlemen-only library founded in 1758 and established as a private club in 1798 named The Athenaeum when it was rebuilt with a newsroom and coffeehouse. It had an entrance fee of one guinea and annual subscription of five shillings. An analysis of the registers for the first twelve years provides glimpses of middle-class reading habits in a mercantile community at this period. The largest and most popular sections of the library were History, Antiquities, and Geography, with 283 titles and 6,121 borrowings, and Belles Lettres, with 238 titles and 3,313 borrowings. The most popular single work was John Hawkesworth's Account of Voyages ... in the Southern Hemisphere (3 vols) which was borrowed on 201 occasions. The records also show that in 1796, membership had risen by 1/3 to 198 subscribers (of whom 5 were women) and the titles increased five-fold to 4,987. This mirrors the increase in reading interests. A patron list from the Bath Municipal Library shows that from 1793 to 1799, the library held a stable 30% of their patrons as female.
It was also uncommon for these libraries to have buildings designated solely as the library building during the 1790s, though in the 19th century, many libraries would begin building elaborate permanent residences. Bristol, Birmingham, and Liverpool were the few libraries with their own building. The accommodations varied from the shelf for a few dozen volumes in the country stationer's or draper's shop, to the expansion to a back room, to the spacious elegant areas of Hookham's or those at the resorts like Scarborough, and four in a row at Margate.
Private-subscription libraries held a greater amount of control over both membership and the types of books in the library. There was almost a complete elimination of cheap fiction in the private societies. Subscription libraries prided themselves on respectability. The highest percentage of subscribers were often landed proprietors, gentry, and old professions.
Towards the end of the 18th century and in the first decades of the 19th century, the demand for books and general education made itself felt among social classes generated by the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. The late-18th century saw a rise in subscription libraries intended for the use of tradesmen. In 1797, there was established at Kendal what was known as the Economical Library, "designed principally for the use and instruction of the working classes." There was also the Artizans' library established at Birmingham in 1799. The entrance fee was 3 shillings, and the subscription was 1 shilling 6 pence per quarter. This was a library of general literature. Novels, at first excluded, were afterwards admitted on condition that they did not account for more than one-tenth of the annual income.
19th–20th centuries
United Kingdom
In 1835, and against government opposition, James Silk Buckingham, MP for Sheffield and a supporter of the temperance movement, was able to secure the Chair of the select committee which would examine "the extent, causes, and consequences of the prevailing vice of intoxication among the labouring classes of the United Kingdom" and propose solutions. Francis Place, a campaigner for the working class, agreed that "the establishment of parish libraries and district reading rooms, and popular lectures on subjects both entertaining and instructive to the community might draw off a number of those who now frequent public houses for the sole enjoyment they afford." Buckingham introduced to Parliament a Public Institution Bill allowing boroughs to charge a tax to set up libraries and museums, the first of its kind. Although this did not become law, it had a major influence on William Ewart MP and Joseph Brotherton MP, who introduced a bill which would "[empower] boroughs with a population of 10,000 or more to raise a ½d for the establishment of museums." This became the Museums Act 1845.
The advocacy of Ewart and Brotherton then succeeded in having a select committee set up to consider public library provision. The Report argued that the provision of public libraries would steer people towards temperate and moderate habits. With a view to maximising the potential of current facilities, the committee made two significant recommendations. They suggested that the government should issue grants to aid the foundation of libraries and that the Museums Act 1845 should be amended and extended to allow for a tax to be levied for the establishment of public libraries.
Objections were raised about the increase in taxation, the potential infringement on private enterprise and the existing library provision such as mechanics' institutes and the fear that it would give rise to "unhealthy social agitation". The bill passed through Parliament as most MPs felt that public libraries would provide facilities for self-improvement through books and reading for all classes, and that the greater levels of education attained by providing public libraries would result in lower crime rates.
Under the terms of the Museums Act 1845, the municipalities of Warrington and Salford established libraries in their museums. Warrington Municipal Library opened in 1848.
Although by the mid-19th century, England could claim 274 subscription libraries and Scotland, 266, the foundation of the modern public library system in Britain is the Public Libraries Act 1850. The act first gave local boroughs the power to establish free public libraries and was the first legislative step toward the creation of an enduring national institution that provides universal free access to information and literature. In the 1830s, at the height of the Chartist movement, there was a general tendency towards reformism in the United Kingdom. The middle classes were concerned that the workers' free time was not being well-spent. This was prompted more by Victorian middle class paternalism than by demand from the lower social orders. Campaigners felt that encouraging the lower classes to spend their free time on morally uplifting activities, such as reading, would promote greater social good. Norwich lays claim to being the first municipality to adopt the Public Libraries Act 1850 (which allowed any municipal borough with a population of 100,000 or more to introduce a halfpenny rate to establish public libraries—although not to buy books); although it did not then establish a library until 1857.
In 1848, Warrington opened a museum and library under the terms of the Museums Act 1845: it was the first rate-supported library in the UK. Salford Museum and Art Gallery first opened in November 1850 as "The Royal Museum & Public Library", the first unconditionally free public library in England. Early public libraries established under the 1850 Act were Winchester (1851), Manchester (1852), Bolton (1853), and Oxford (1854), followed by Liverpool, Kidderminster, Cambridge, Birkenhead and Sheffield. The library opened in Campfield, Manchester, in 1842 was the first library to operate a "free" lending library without subscription. Salford's library, which had opened two years earlier, began as a reference library, before it likewise began to offer a lending service in 1854.
The Public Libraries Act 1850 was noteworthy because it established the principle of free public libraries. In 1866, an amending act, the Public Libraries Amendment Act 1866 (29 & 30 Vict. c. 114) was passed, which eliminated the population limit for the establishment of a library and replaced the two-thirds majority previously required for adoption with a simple majority. It also allowed neighbouring parishes to combine with an existing or potential library authority. Despite the rise in the level of tax public libraries could levy, it was still very difficult for boroughs to raise enough capital to fund new libraries. The growth of the public library movement in the wake of the 1850 act relied heavily on the donations of philanthropists.
County libraries were a later development, which were made possible by the establishment of county councils in 1888. They normally have a large central library in a major town with smaller branch libraries in other towns and a mobile library service covering rural areas.
The Public Libraries Act 1964 required local authorities to provide a "comprehensive and efficient" library service. Public libraries built in the 1960s were characterized by modernism.
United States
The modern public library grew at a great pace at the end of the 19th century, especially in the English-speaking world. Philanthropists and businessmen, including John Passmore Edwards, Henry Tate and Andrew Carnegie, helped to fund the establishment of large numbers of public libraries for the edification of the masses.
Public libraries in North America developed from the 18th century to today; as the country grew more populous and wealthier, factors such as a push for education and desire to share knowledge led to broad public support for free libraries. In addition, money donations by private philanthropists provided the seed capital to get many libraries started. In some instances, collectors donated large book collections.
The first public lending library still in operation in the US is the Franklin Public Library which began with no building and just over 100 books donated by Benjamin Franklin after they named their town after him. The first modern public library in the world supported by taxes was the Peterborough Town Library in Peterborough, New Hampshire, established in 1833. The first large public library supported by taxes in the United States was the Boston Public Library, established in 1848 and first opened its doors to the public in 1854.
The Redwood Library and Athenaeum was founded in 1747 by a group led by Abraham Redwood. It was the first library in Rhode Island and the oldest lending library in America. Over half of its volumes were lost when it was used as the British Officers Club during the Revolutionary War. An effort was made to replace the original collection. Over 90% of the volumes lost were returned. The library is still in use.
A total of 1,689 Carnegie libraries were built in the United States between 1883 and 1929, including some belonging to universities. By 1930, half the American public libraries had been built by Carnegie.
