A public library is a 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.
There are five fundamental characteristics shared by public libraries: they are generally supported by taxes (usually local, though any level of government can and may contribute); they are governed by a board to serve the public interest; they are open to all, and every community member can access the collection; they are entirely voluntary, no one is ever forced to use the services provided and they provide library and information services services without charge.[1]
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 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.
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.[2]
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.[3]
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.[4]
The Malatestiana Library (Italian: Biblioteca Malatestiana), also known as the Malatesta Novello Library, is a public library dating from 1452 in Cesena, Emilia-Romagna (Italy). It was the first European civic library,[5] i.e. belonging to the Commune and open to everybody. It was commissioned by the Lord of Cesena, Malatesta Novello. The works were directed by Matteo Nuti of Fano (a scholar of Leon Battista Alberti) and lasted from 1447 to 1452.
In Cesena, Italy, the first community-run public library, the Malatestiana Library, was established in 1447, provided both secular and religious texts in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and was fully open to all members of the public.
Another early library also allowing 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."[7]
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 and unavailable to borrow, hence its name: the Francis Trigge Chained Library.[8]
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[9] (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.[10]
Biblioteca Palafoxiana in Puebla City, Mexico, is recognized by UNESCO for being the first public library in the Americas. It was founded in 1646 by Juan de Palafox y Mendoza.[11][12][13] In his seminal work Advis pour dresser une bibliothÃque (1644) the French scholar and librarian Gabriel Naudà 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.[14]
Claude Sallier, the French philologist and churchman, operated an early form of a public library in the town of Saulieu from 1737 to 1750. He wished to make culture and learning accessible to all people.[citation needed]
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.[16] Libraries also were not uniformly open to the public. In 1790, The Public Library Act would not be passed for another sixty-seven years.[17]
In A.D 1820, the State Central Library, Kerala started functioning in Trivandrum, India, which is not only India's first public library but also the first such institution outside of Europe. However, there had come into being a whole network of library provisions on a private or institutional basis. Subscription libraries, both private and commercial, provided the middle to upper classes with a variety of books for moderate fees.
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."[22] The mid-to-late 18th century saw a virtual epidemic of feminine reading as novels became more and more popular.[23] 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.[24] Still, many establishments must have circulated many times the number of novels as of any other genre.[25]
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.[26] The national average start of the 20th century hovered around novels comprising about 20% of the total collection.[27] 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-SÃbastien 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.[19] This allowed more readers could have access to the same work at the same time, making it more profitable for the circulating libraries.
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