Benjamin Franklin was one of the founding fathers of the United States of America: “He confirmed to what was to become the pattern of the ideal American; the self-made man rising from a boyhood of poverty and obscurity to a manhood of fame and future” (Goodman 1). He took a pro-active role in establishing the first subscription library in North America, the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1731. This was his first project of a public nature and soon became the mother of all subscription libraries in North America (Goodman 2). The library facilitated the idea of reading, readership, and literacy in the new country. As Franklin himself agrees that “the library offered the means of improvement by constant study, for which I set apart an hour each day, and thus repaired to some degree the loss of the learned education my father once intended for me” (Franklin 37). American libraries were at the forefront in establishing an intellect America, by making the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentleman from other countries (Franklin 34). Therefore, Franklin adopted a purchasing policy that was responsive to the needs of its intellectual non-elite citizens (Wolfe).
The Library Company laid its foundation with a little sum of money. As the library expanded, it gained a number of contributors and borrowers from all over America. It was initially supported by a young group of tradesmen, ‘the Junto’. “The Junto was a discussion group of young men seeking social, economic, intellectual, and political advancement” (Wolfe). Fifty Junto members subscribed forty shillings each, and promised to pay ten shillings a year to buy books and maintain a shareholder’s library (Wolfe). The subscribers engaged to pay a certain sum down for the first purchase of books, and an annual contribution for increasing them (American Monthly Review 418). The library was opened once a week for lending to subscribers, on their promissory notes to pay double the value if not duly returned (Franklin 36). During the first few years, Franklin faced financial constraints because of the shortage of monetary donations. However, as reading became fashionable and Americans were better acquitted with books, the number of subscribers substantially increased and so did the donations (Franklin 36). Gifts in kind and in cash began to increase the library’s books and financial resources
Benjamin Franklin closely monitored and organized the collection of books. Many of the books were imported from London on a semiannual basis. By 1741, He printed copies of his Library Catalogue, which was a small octavo of fifty-six pages listing the three hundred seventy-five titles then in the library (Wolfe). This was the first American library catalogue to give titles as well as a place and date of publication (Wolfe). The catalogue included books on subjects like history, geography, poetry, exploration, and science. Only ten percent were devoted to theological studies (Wolfe). Proving that the nation was advancing in all fields of study and building a generation of American intellects. By 1770, a new printed catalogue with 2033 entries was prepared and published (Wolfe). A large number of books listed in this catalogue were donated by readers and regular visitors. “On this occasion the books were renumbered by size, beginning an accession series that continues today” (Wolfe). “Members of the library borrowed freely without charge, while non-members could books by depositing their value as security and paying a small acknowledgement for the reading” (Wolfe). In contrast to university libraries, who read books in Latin, the majority of the literature in the Library Company was predominately English. Franklin’s establishment of the Library Company was a public project, for the betterment and advancement of society. Today, Franklin’s Library Company exists as a non-profit, independent research library. As stated in Library and Society: “Although small at first, the library has continued to be highly valuable and useful, and which the walls of this building are now destined to contain and preserve”.
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