Public libraries in North America

A public library is a library that is accessible by the general public and is generally funded from public sources, such as taxes. It is operated by librarians and library paraprofessionals, who are also civil servants.

As the United States developed from the 18th century to today, growing 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.

William James Sidis in The Tribes and the States claims the public library, as such, was an American invention.

There were parish (parochial) libraries open in Anglican churches all over the American colonies. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, founded in 1701, subsidized libraries as a regular part of their missionary activity whenever they sent a priest to an Anglican mission or church that did not have a library already. There would thus have been parish libraries at the 289 Anglican churches, and at various missions.

According to Edmund Farwell Slafter, the first public library was founded in Boston by the Rev. John Checkley at the Old State House sometime between 1711 when Boston's Old State House was built, and 1725. In a letter to the Rev. Dr. Thomas Bennet, dated June 15, 1725, Checkley wrote:

The library was destroyed when the Old State House interior was consumed by fire on December 9, 1747,when many books, papers, and records were destroyed.

There is evidence of other and possibly earlier public libraries. The Rev. John Sharpe, who had traveled as a missionary priest over the colonies from Maryland to Connecticut, thought the parish library in New York inadequate. He devised an advanced plan for a public library in New York City open to all. In a letter on March 11, 1713 he notes there were already at least four public libraries in the colonies including the one in Boston:

He proposed the institution should be "publick and provincial" and "open every day in the week at convenient hours," when "all men may have liberty to read in the Library."

Just before returning to England in 1713 after a decade spent as a missionary priest in America, he left behind 238 of his volumes to be "given for the laying of a foundation of a Public Library." However, it wasn't until thirty years after Sharp left America that a dozen men in 1754 founded the New York Society Library with Sharp's books as its core. His advanced dream of a library open every day was not to be accomplished in New York until 1791.

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