Thankful to Carnegie on Thanksgiving

Andrew Carnegie's 175th birthday will fall on Thanksgiving Day. This is an appropriate day for those 1412 communities in the United States that received funding from Carnegie to build 1679 public library buildings to be thankful to Carnegie for the generosity which impacted their communities in such a positive way. Although many of the buildings no longer exist and others have been repurposed, all of the buildings, for a significant period, were a place where lives were changed for the better. Many of the Carnegie library buildings, some after over a hundred years, still function as public libraries. My first library job was in a Carnegie building that served as the central library for Nashville, TN. I also spent many enjoyable and profitable hours in the Carnegie building that housed the George Peabody College Library in Nashville, TN. To help celebrate Carnegie's 175th birthday, I put together a tribute on the Library History Buff website, and also prepared an exhibit on Andrew Carnegie's Wisconsin Library Legacy which is on display this month at the Meade Public Library in Sheboygan, WI.  It was previously on display in September in Middleton, WI. There are also a number of other posts on this blog about Carnegie libraries.