THE DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC LIBRARIESo 



BY CHARLES AMMI CUTLER. 



fCharlos Ammi Ciitlor, late librarian of the Forbes library, was ono of the most 

 famous of American librarians, and his Rules for a Dictionary Catalog? and his expan- 

 sive classitieation are permanent contributions to library economy; born in Boston 

 in 1837. he graduated from Harvard university in 1855, becoming assistant in the 

 Harvard college library, librarian of the Boston Athenieum in 1869 and of tin; Forlies 

 library in 1893i he was editor of the Library Journal 1881-93.] 



In the first year of the nineteenth century the United 

 States, with a popiihition of five and a third miUions, had 64 

 libraries intended for popular use, or, if we call the parochial 

 libraries founded by Dr. Bray public, and assume that most of 

 them survived the Revolution, there were 100 libraries con- 

 taining perhaps 50,000 volumes in all. In the last year of the 

 century there were over 10,000 libraries owning 40,000,000 

 volumes, half of these libraries having over 1,000 volumes each. 

 Thus, while our territory is less than four times as large and 

 our population is only fourteen or fifteen times as large, there 

 are one hundred times as many libraries containing eight hun- 

 dred times as many books. 



There is no means whatever of ascertaining how many 

 volumes reached the readers of 1801, but it is unlikely that the 

 output exceeded the stock, for it was a time of solid books and 

 slow readers. In 1900, 50,000,000 volimies were issued; that 

 is, the circulation has grown a thousandfold. 



Americans have always been a bookish people. The very 

 first colonists brought books with them from Europe. There 

 were books, few but prized, in many households, and in time 

 some private libraries of size and fame. Public libraries have 

 a history almost as old. The Puritans had hardly landed when 

 they founded a college and with it a library. Harvard college 

 library, born in 1638, was followed in 1700 by two others, Yale 

 and WiUiam and Mary; and by twelve others in the following 

 hundred years, so that the last century began with 15 col- 

 lege libraries. It closed with over forty times as many. 



Joint stock libraries, implying cities and a certain amount 

 of wealth, were of later origin. The first was founded in 1731 



