On This Day
November 14, 1732
How the simple hiring of a librarian in Philadelphia set the stage for the world’s largest library before America even existed.
On This Day
What Happened:
- A young 20-something Benjamin Franklin helped found the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1731
- On November 14, 1732, the Library Company hired its first librarian.
- Operating like a membership service (costing 40 shillings to join &10 shillings per year), patrons could visit & borrow books arriving from Europe that would be too expensive for them to buy.
On This Day
Historical Importance
- The library became the first lending library in America.
- “The Club” allowed members of the first Continental Congress to use it as a resource for free. This privilege continued for politicians post-revolution and set the groundwork for The Library of Congress – “the oldest cultural institution in the nation.”
On This Day
We discovered this "On This Day" while perusing one of our favorite websites: LOC.gov (Library of Congress). If you put all the bookshelves in the Library of Congress end to end, they would stretch from Washington D.C. to Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Read
Sources
- The Library Company
https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/november-14 - History of the Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/about/history-of-the-library/
https://www.loc.gov/about/fascinating-facts/ - The State of American Libraries http://www.ala.org/news/sites/ala.org.news/files/content/2019-soal-report-final-accessible.pdf
- The Library Company of Philadelphia:
https://librarycompany.org/about-lcp/