The Library Assistant's Manual

By THEODORE W. KOCH
Librarian, University of Michigan
Provisional Edition
LANSING, MICHIGAN
STATE BOARD OF LIBRARY COMMISSIONERS
1913
Issued on the occasion of the 61st annual meeting of the Michigan State Teachers’ Association, Ann Arbor, October 30-November 1, 1913.

The forerunner of the American public library of today is found in the subscription or stock company libraries of Philadelphia, Boston and other cities. The oldest of these is the Philadelphia Library Company, founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin who later referred to it as “the mother of all subscription libraries in America.” The Rev. Jacob Duché, a director of the Library Company, wrote in 1774: “Literary accomplishments here meet with deserved applause. But such is the taste for books that almost every man is a reader.” The Library Company’s authority on book selection was James Logan (the friend of William Penn) who was esteemed “to be a gentleman of universal learning and the best judge of books in these parts.” In 1783 the Library Committee instructed its London agent that “though not averse to mingling the dulce with the utile, they did not care to have him buy any more novels.”
In 1869 the Library Company was made the beneficiary under the will of Dr. James Rush, who left $1,500,000 to establish the Ridgeway Branch. On account of the conditions attached to the bequest, the gift was accepted by a bare majority of the stockholders. Among other restrictions, the will contained the following clause: “Let the library not keep cushioned seats for time-wasting and lounging readers, nor places for every-day novels, mind-tainting reviews, controversial politics, scribblings of poetry and prose, biographies of unknown names, nor for those teachers of disjointed thinking, the daily newspapers.” The provisions of the will were strictly carried out and today the Ridgeway Library stands as a storehouse of the literature of the past, a monument to the donor and an evidence of the change that has come over the world in its conception of the function of the library.