Our modern day society
thrives on information. We watch the
news. We read articles in the
newspaper. We scour the Internet for
information. We
use our phones to receive information whenever and wherever we
want. People from the 19th
and 20th centuries were not so different from us in their longing
for information.
In the late 1800’s
libraries were the central hubs of information for a community. Scores of people went to libraries. Andrew Carnegie wrote that the user
statistics for a library established by Enoch Platt in Baltimore showed that
37,196 people were registered as “readers” and that more than 37,000 people
used that library in just one year (Librarianship
in the Gilded Age America: An Anthology
of Writings 1868-1901 by L.C. Schlup, p. 106)!
Andrew Carnegie, incredible philanthropist, was himself a seeker of knowledge. According the National Park Service, as a
young boy Carnegie met Col. James Anderson of Allegheny who opened his personal
library up to young workers who wished to borrow books. When, in 1853, access to this book collection was
denied, Carnegie (who was less than 18 years old) pledged to establish access
to books for poor workers if he, himself, ever became rich.
And that is just what
Carnegie did! He accumulated enormous
wealth and would be in the category of today’s elite
wealthy, such as Bill Gates. In the 1890’s
Carnegie began to give away his fortune, mostly for the establishment of
libraries, with no strings attached. At
that time there were only 400 libraries in the entire United States, with only
four public libraries in Texas (Carnegie
Libraries Across America: A Public Legacy by T. Jones)!
The Fort Worth Public Library was the result
of Mrs. D. B. Keeler’s letter to Carnegie.
Fort Worth received $50,000 (much more than the average figure of less
than $10,000) and had an operational library by 1901. By the time Carnegie died
in 1919, he had given away more than $350,000,000. Texas had gained 32 Carnegie libraries.
Across the United States, 1,689 libraries had been built by the Carnegie
Foundation (from Texas Library Journal (Winter 2010) Carnegie Libraries: The Jumpstart to Public Libraries in Texas by L.M.Geppert Jacobs).
To join Tarleton’s celebration
of libraries tweet: #libraryloversmonth @TarletonLib.
1 comment:
Great information. I appreciate the links to additional information.
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