It's an interesting coincidence that Benjamin Franklin's 305th birthday falls on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this year. It prompted me to look into Franklin's stand on slavery and I came across an interesting item on the National Archives website about this topic. It indicates that although Franklin did not speak out publicly against slavery until late in life, one of his last public acts was to send a petition to Congress seeking an end to the slave trade.
Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706 in Boston, Massachusetts. Franklin is probably best known in the library community for founding the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1731. It was America's first lending library and can lay claim to being the predecessor of the free public library. For a brief period (Dec. 1733-Mar. 1734) Franklin actually served as the librarian for the Library Company. He also served as its secretary from 1746 to 1757. Franklin considered the Library Company to be the "Mother of all N. American Subscription Libraries ....". Franklin amassed a large personal library which was written about in The Library of Benjamin Franklin by Edwin Wolf 2nd and Kevin J. Hayes (American Philosophical Society and The Library Company of Philadelphia, 2006).
Franklin appeared on the first United States postage stamp (shown above) and has been depicted on more U.S. postage stamps than any other American except George Washington.
As a proponent of a library history museum, my adrenalin got going pretty good when I came across an historic book wagon for sale on eBay. The seller is offering it for a "Buy it now" price of $15,000, but is willing to consider a lesser offer. If I only had a spare $15,000 and space to store it. According to the seller on eBay, the book wagon dates to the 1920s and was on display in Vancouver, British Columbia for the 1986 World Expo. Mary L. Titcomb, the Librarian of the Washington County Free Library, sent out the first book wagon in the United States in Hagerstown, Maryland in April, 1905. Titcomb designed the book wagon which had space for 200 books on the outside of the wagon and storage space for more books on the inside. I have a "Tribute to the Bookmobile" on the Library History Buff website.
Addendum: On January 16 the book wagon was relisted for a period of up to 29 days, so you may still have time to purchase this great item and preserve a piece of library history.
The postal card above may be the second oldest overdue notice in existence (click here to see the oldest). It was mailed to a student by the Corresponding Secretary of the Parthenon Literary Society at West Virginia University (Morgantown, WV) in May of 1874. College literary societies with a library were fairly common in 18th and 19th century American academic institutions. I wrote about two such societies at Dartmouth College in an earlier post. There's a good article about these literary societies in Wikipedia. Literary societies sometimes preceded fraternities on college campuses and this was the case at West Virginia University (click here for more about this). The overdue notice which is entirely handwritten reads as follows: "Mr. Shields you are charged on the Library book of The Parthenon Literary Society with a book entitled 'American Family in Germany' and by action of the Society it becomes my duty to inform you that the book must be returned or its equivalent as soon as possible." Mr. Shields had evidently forgotten to return the book before going home to Charleston, WV for the summer.
Today is the 180th anniversary of the birth of Justin Winsor (1831-1897), President of the American Library Association from its founding in 1876 until 1885 and later in 1897. Although not trained in librarianship when he became Superintendent of the Boston Public Library in 1868, he became the foremost American librarian of his time. He left the Boston Public Library in 1877 to become Librarian of Harvard College where he served until his death in 1897. The postal card above was signed by Winsor on January 3, 1876, 135 years ago tomorrow. It is the acknowledgement of a gift of two copies of a pamphlet. ALA's Library History Round Table awards the Justin Winsor Prize for Library History Essay in Winsor's honor. A listing of ALA's past presidents can be found HERE.
I'm always on the look out for opportunities to celebrate library history. Anniversaries of important dates and events is obviously one way of doing this. Although centennials of libraries are a common way of celebrating library history, I'm of the opinion that significant anniversaries can be celebrated as often as every five years. Obviously, the more significant the anniversary the greater opportunity it presents. For some ideas on celebrating library anniversaries click HERE.
The year 1876 was probably the most significant year in American library history. This year is the 135th anniversary of 1876 and all that happened in that year. This was the year that the American Library Association was founded. It was also the year in which Melvil Dewey first published his decimal system of book classification. The Library Journal, originally the American Library Journal, began publication in 1876. The landmark publication Public Libraries in the United States of America was also published by the U. S. Bureau of Education in that year.
It is not surprising that New York under the influence of Melvil Dewey was the first state to organize a state library association. This occurred in 1890. One year later in 1891, 120 years ago, seven more states established library associations. These were in Wisconsin, Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Kansas, Minnesota, and Indiana. A great year to celebrate 12 decades of library promotion by these associations.
Every year, with the help of the Dictionary of American Library Biography and its supplements, I try to identify key birth anniversaries of important library people and make note of them in the Library History Buff blog, This year will be the 305th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin, the 180th anniversary for Justin Winsor, the 160th for Melvil Dewey, the 150th for Herbert Putnam, the 130th for Julia Wright Merrill, and the 100th for Augusta Baker, to name a few.
The Carnegie Corporation of New York celebrates centennial in 2011.
The Society of American Archivists celebrates its 75th anniversary.
Other dates and events that lend themselves to the celebration of library history are National Library Week, American Archives Month, Preservation Month, and National Bookmobile Day, to name a few.
The invitation to the attendees of the 1876 meeting of librarians which is shown above is a reproduction.
