DesertSailordotInfo

Page written summer, 1998 While at the University of Arizona

1876 was a banner year for libraries in the United States. Almost every introductory course in schools of library and information science will list all the things that happened in that year:

1. The American Library Association is founded.
2. Library Journal is founded.
3. The first edition of the Dewey Decimal Classification is published.
4. Custer got creamed.
5. The U.S. Bureau of Education publishes Public Libraries in the United States of America: Their History, Condition, and Management, widely referred to as the1876 Report

The title page for the 1876 Report is reproduced here.

Most librarians, even the non-historically minded, need no introduction to the first four events listed above. Well, ok, number 4 is a ringer. The others are all still with us, albeit in rather different form than their 19th Century origins. The 1876 Report is rather a different matter. It is, to be sure, widely cited. Jesse Shera and Sidney Ditzion in writing on public libraries make extensive use of the document.¹ Louis Shores² and Arthur Hamlin,³ writing about academic libraries also make use of the Report. George Bobinski’s classic Carnegie Libraries likewise mines the Report.⁴   I’m sure there are many more, but those are the volumes that happen to be within reach as I write this.

Given the topics noted above, it should be apparent that there is a lot more in the Reportthan just public libraries. In fact the very term “public library” has a rather different connotation in 1876 than our present definition. Most people today, and certainly most librarians, would define “public library” as tax supported, open to all, and administered by local government, or words to that effect. In 1876 “public library” was more broadly defined, encompassing any library open to any segment of the population. Hence an academic library in 1876 is, in the meaning of times, a public library. Anything not in strictly private hands is a public library. They did not, in those days, make the fine distinctions amongst type of library (school, public, academic, special) that we make today.

In fact the Report ranges widely over the library landscape of the day. The Table of Contents ranges from a historical sketch of public libraries in the 18th century through school and asylum libraries (an interesting combination, depending on your view of third graders), law, medical, scientific….. etc. The authors represented are a wide range of library luminaries of the day. Just the folks I recognize include John Shaw Billings, Henry A. Holmes, W.I Fletcher, Josiah Quincy, Justin Winsor, William Frederick Poole, Charles Ammi Cutter, Melvil Dewey, and Ainsworth Rand Spofford.

The Report is a massive document- 1187 pages long, printed on not very good paper by the Government Printing Office.⁵

Beyond calling some attention to it, the purpose of this page is not to present a detailed analysis. This all came about because the School of Information Resources and Library Science bought a scanner. In learning how to use the thing, I needed some images to scan. The Report is, of course, public domain, and I knew there were some nice illustrations of old library buildings included. One thing led to another, and here we are. The illustrations are linked below in the order in which they appear in the Report. Where possible I have included links to the modern versions of the libraries included here. In a couple of instances, they are in the same building! I’ve tried to dig up some history for each of the illustrated buildings, greatly aided by present day librarians of the institutions involved.

In addition to the page references in the Report I’ve added page references for Kenneth A. Breisch’s Henry Hobson Richardson and the Small Public Library in America(MIT Press, 1997), a book that I have found absolutely invaluable in preparing these pages. If the Breisch reference is in Roman it is the first mention of the library in the index. If italicized it is the page number for an illustration.

If anybody has additional information to include, please email me.⁶

Images from the 1876 Report

Library	Page in The Report	Page in Breisch
The Loganian Public Library (Philadelphia)	7	56
The Redwood Library (Newport, RI)	17	12
Wellesley College Library	91	38
Princeton University Library	101
Concord (MA) Public Library	391	80-82
Roxbury Branch (Boston Public Library)	397	87
Northampton (MA) Public Library	441	47
Worcester (MA) Public Library	449
Cornell Library (Ithaca, NY)	457	13
Floor Plans for Justin Winsor's proposed Library to hold 1 million volumes	473-475
Original Boston Public Library	861, 865, 869	72, 74-75
Cincinnati Public Library	909, 913	223
Lenox Library (NY)	947	97
The Library Company of Philadelphia	955	56
The Ridgway Library of Philadelphia	959	106
The Apprentices' Library of Philadelphia	971

Footnotes

1. Jesse Shera Foundations of the Public Library Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949, reprinted by Shoe String Press, 1965, 1974.

   Jesse Shera Foundations of the Public Library Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949, reprinted by Shoe String Press, 1965, 1974.

   Sidney Ditzion Arsenals of a Democratic Culture Chicago: American Library Association, 1947.

   The 1876 Report is the second item cited by Ditzion.

   [↩]

2. Louis Shores Origins of the American College Library, 1638-1800 Boston: Gregg Press, 1972. [↩]
3. Arthur Hamlin The University Library in the United States; Its Origins and Development Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981. [↩]
4. George Bobinski Carnegie Libraries: Their History and Impact on American Public Library Development Chicago: American Library Association, 1969. [↩]
5. A ha! Now it all becomes clear, we are talking about a government document here, which always makes location a problem. Shera, et al. duly give more or less proper citations to the piece. Here, however, is the secret knowledge you need to find the Report on the shelves of the local GPO depository collection (assuming said collection goes back far enough).

   The Superintendent of Documents call number is I 16.2:L61/1.

   For the government publications knowledgeable among you, there was apparently no Congressional edition, at least as far at the 1909 Checklist is concerned.

   Part 2 of the Report, Charles Ammi Cutter’s Rules for a Printed Dictionary Catalogue, went on to become one the fundamental documents that forms the basis for present cataloging codes.

   [↩]

6. On the Cincinnati illustration PL illustration listed below: the illustration on page 223 in Breisch is a woodcut attributed to James H. McLaughlin. To my eye it is exactly the same illustration as the one in the Report with the exception of rearranged reading tables and the presence of people in the Breisch version. The Report version was cut by O. (possibly C.) A. Powell, but that does not mean he did the original work. [↩]