Free Town Libraries; Their Formation, Management, and History, in Britain, France, Germany and America, Together with Brief Notices of ... of Deposit of Their Surviving Collections

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1869 edition. Excerpt: ...the active exertion, of individual citizens, in their private and personal capacity. Probably, few years have passed, between that distant meeting of the Town Council of Aix which was called, for the establishment of a 'Town Library,' in the year 1418, and the meeting for a like purpose of the Town Council of Bradford, held but the other day (1868), which have not been marked, in one country or another, by the founding of a Town Library of some sort. Many of those four hundred and fifty years witnessed the formation of several such libraries. The ' Notices Of Collectors' which close the present volume contain a brief account of the origin of about one hundred and eighty existing Town Libraries in primary collections which passed, eventually, from the possession of individual gatherers or owners into the collective possession of some town or other. A few of these came as accessions to Town Libraries already formed. A large majority of them were the foundation collections on which Town Libraries were based. Of the whole number so noticed, in the pages which follow, only sixteen were acquired by municipal purchase. One hundred and sixty-four were the gifts--commonly the testamentary gifts--of book-lovers who desired to diffuse an enjoyment and a means of self-culture which, by no small proportion of their number, had been found full of power both to facilitate the duties and to solace the cares of human life. Of those who, by this particular channel of social beneficence, have tried to serve the towns with which they had social ties, no less than sixty-six have been Italians; about fifty have been Germans or Swiss; eighteen, Frenchmen. England, Scotland, and Ireland, together, can claim but thirteen who hold even a moderately conspicuous...