Traveling library

A traveling library is a collection of books lent for stated periods by a central library to a branch library, club, or other organization or, in some instances, to an individual. The chief characteristics from which it derives its name are its temporary location in the place to which the collections of books is sent and the implication that any traveling library will or may be changed for another collection of books. A bookmobile is an example.

The date of the first traveling library is uncertain. Among its forerunners can be noted the itinerant chapman and ballad seller, the religious colporteur, and the camp library of Napoleon I listed in Bourrienne's Mémoires. The traveling library can also be cited as a logical outgrowth of the "circulating schools" of Wales, promoted in 1730 by Griffith Jones, and the later similar extension schools of the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland in the Highlands and the Scottish islands.

The first really practicable traveling library plan seems to have been started by Samuel Brown in East Lothian, Scotland, in 1817, though it is stated that the principle had been used with some Scottish parish libraries as early as 1810. Brown procured 200 selected volumes "about two-thirds of which were of a moral and religious tendency, while the remainder comprised books of travel, agriculture, the mechanical arts and popular sciences." Four libraries of 50 volumes each were stationed in Aberlady, Salton, Tyninghame and Gawald. In 20 years these libraries had increased to 3,850 volumes, distributed through 47 villages. Jean Frédéric Oberlin is said to have founded itinerant libraries in his parish of Waldersbach in the Vosges Mountains at about the same time that the East Lothian libraries were established. Both of these early plans barely survived their founders.

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