Library (institution)

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School Libraries

The first school libraries in the United States and Canada opened in the 18th century in elite private schools. Most schools lacked their own libraries until the 19th century, when local governments first established publicly funded school systems. In 1835 the New York State legislature passed the nation’s first school-district library legislation. This legislation provided tax-supported library service for the entire population within the jurisdiction of each school district. This funding mechanism soon spread throughout the United States and Canada, and school districts established their own libraries for their communities. Most of these libraries were located in rooms within the school that were not used for the instruction of students. Although their primary mission was to serve the general public, these libraries also offered limited services to students.

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, educational leaders increasingly advocated the creation of school libraries that would support the general curriculum of the schools the libraries served and would be available only to students and teachers. Seeking greater autonomy for school library services, the National Education Association of the United States (NEA) pressed for the separate funding, staffing, and administration of school libraries as early as 1912. Along with the National Council of Teachers of English and the American Library Association, the NEA established quality standards for high school libraries that stipulated appropriate collections, services, and facilities. School boards began to endorse these standards in 1920, and most high schools eventually established quality library collections, hired librarians, and created recommended reading lists for students. Elementary schools during this period generally lacked formal libraries for their students.

The growth of school libraries temporarily slowed during the economic collapse of the 1930s and the outbreak of World War II in 1939. After the end of the war in 1945, however, high school libraries in many communities of the United States and Canada gained more public funds, and elementary schools finally began to establish libraries of their own. Nevertheless, in the 1950s many school libraries were in poor condition, and as late as 1962 one-half of all public schools were without libraries.

Libraries became much more prevalent in schools beginning in the mid-1960s. The introduction to the classroom of audio and visual media such as filmstrips was especially influential in stimulating this spread of school libraries. By the late 1960s school libraries continued to provide traditional printed materials, but they had also evolved into media centers that collected, maintained, and circulated films, filmstrips, and audio recordings. In the United States, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 earmarked federal funds for schools and school libraries. By providing substantial aid for new library quarters, equipment, and the hiring of trained librarians, the act further spurred the development of libraries in schools throughout the country. Elementary and secondary schools also benefited from the Higher Education Acts of 1965 and 1966, which provided funds for the education of school librarians.

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By 1978, 85 percent of the 83,044 public schools in the United States had a library or media center. Nearly 50 percent of these school libraries reported holdings of between 5,000 and 9,000 volumes. Still, in 1978 almost 3 million students attended schools without a library or media center.

Since the 1970s, school libraries have struggled to provide state-of-the-art information resources. Despite widespread recognition of the benefits of school libraries, public funds often prove inadequate for schools to hire professional staff, develop new collections, or modernize facilities. As a result, many elementary and secondary school libraries have closed, and the materials of many other school libraries are seriously out of date. Those that have remained open have often survived by hiring library workers who lack professional credentials. These workers usually report to trained media specialists who supervise entire districts. In some areas, such as Scottsdale, Arizona, and New Orleans, Louisiana, public officials reestablished libraries that served both the schools and the general public in the hope of saving money by eliminating any duplication of services.

In the 1990s educational leaders and library advocates attempted to counter these trends by mounting new development efforts to provide school libraries with current materials and connections to the Internet. Some of these efforts have been successful. For example, in 1997 students at 78 percent of U.S. public schools had access to the Internet, up from 35 percent in 1994. In 1999 the National Center for Educational Statistics estimated that 95 percent of U.S. public schools would have Internet access by 2000.

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College and University Libraries

Library collections in institutions of higher education north of Mexico date from 1635, when the library for the Collège des Jésuites was established in Québec. The Jesuit college no longer exists, but some books from the library’s collection now belong to the library of Université Laval in Sainte-Foy, Québec. In 1638 English clergyman John Harvard donated some 300 hundred books to a fledgling college in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Administrators of the college later decided to name the school Harvard College (now Harvard University) in honor of its benefactor.

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Early Collections

The small collections of library materials in the colleges of colonial North America provided limited services to their users. In the 17th and 18th centuries North American colleges relied heavily on monetary donations and gifts of books from private collectors. These collectors often favored theological works, so academic libraries found themselves with collections that focused on limited subjects. Most libraries also kept irregular hours because they were usually managed by a single faculty member who supervised the collection in addition to teaching in the classroom. Academic libraries provided very limited access to their collections. They extended borrowing privileges only to those whom the librarian deemed worthy—usually faculty members and occasionally advanced students, but almost never first- or second-year students. To gain access to written materials, students on many campuses formed their own literary-society libraries, some of which were eventually incorporated by the academic libraries of the 19th century.

In the second half of the 19th century administrators at many colleges and universities enhanced academic library budgets to better meet the growing needs of faculty and students. Until this period, colleges and universities usually had required all of their students to follow a fixed course of study. Because the typical college curriculum focused on reading an established set of classical texts, the limited collections of academic libraries were often adequate to meet these needs. This pattern changed when Harvard president Charles William Eliot began his tenure at the university in 1869 and allowed students to take elective courses. Other American colleges soon followed Harvard’s elective-course model, making subject departments more responsive to individual student interests. To support this broader curriculum, the college library collections needed to include more diverse materials. Also, universities in the United States were beginning to employ professors, like Eliot, who had studied in research-oriented German universities. These professors came to American institutions and demanded libraries with better research facilities for themselves and their students.

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Expansion

By the late 19th century library hours began to increase, and collections grew both in depth of coverage and in diversity of topics. Academic libraries stored their general collections in centralized locations for access by undergraduates majoring in different specialties. The libraries generally clustered more specific collections into departmental libraries for graduate study. In the 20th century academic librarians devised a closed reserve system, which removed from circulation certain heavily used materials so that users could be certain of gaining access to the materials on the shelves.

College enrollments swelled in the United States after World War II (1939-1945). Unprecedented numbers of veterans gained access to higher education through the provisions of the GI Bill, which paid their college tuition (see Department of Veterans Affairs: The GI Bill). As academic libraries struggled to serve an expanded clientele, their budgets became increasingly strained. The federal government provided assistance with the 1965 Higher Education Act, which provided grants for acquisitions and new facilities.

A postwar economic boom in Canada affected the size and diversity of academic libraries there as well. College and university students demonstrated a renewed interest in professional training, and this interest fostered the development of postgraduate education programs and the libraries to sustain this new scholarship. The vast majority of Canadian colleges and universities were publicly funded, and provincial and federal governments provided libraries with extensive financial support during the economically prosperous 1960s. These funds stimulated a building boom and a surge in the size of academic library collections and staffs throughout the country.

Like the United States, however, Canada experienced a series of economic recessions beginning in the 1970s and lasting into the 1980s. This period of recession resulted in shrinking financial support for college and university libraries. The libraries coped with these budgetary constraints by strengthening cooperation between institutions, sharing cataloging responsibilities, establishing reciprocal borrowing agreements, and creating interlibrary loan networks. In the meantime, library operation costs continued to escalate in both the United States and Canada. The price of subscriptions to scholarly journals had become especially high, causing difficulties for academic libraries as they struggled to stay within their limited budgets. Academic libraries tried to withstand these difficulties in the 1980s and 1990s by pooling their buying strengths into local networks. Member libraries collectively purchased scholarly articles through a supplier and then distributed these articles among themselves. By the mid-1990s nearly all campus libraries in the United States and Canada provided Internet access, which provided still greater access to scholarly materials through interlibrary networks.

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Private and Research Libraries

As do libraries elsewhere in the world, libraries in the United States and Canada owe a great debt to private book collectors who donated their personal libraries to institutions for wider use. A few of these collections formed the core of respected independent research libraries. However, most ended up in public or academic libraries. For example, the private library of American financier John Pierpont Morgan was made into the Pierpont Morgan Library, a public research library in New York. More recently, in 1983 the Lilly Library of Indiana University acquired the 10,000-volume children’s book collection of Elisabeth Ball, daughter of a successful glass manufacturer in Muncie, Indiana.

Large numbers of book collectors and benefactors in the United States and Canada established private research libraries in reaction to the public library movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many started the private libraries because they were concerned that public collections would lack the resources needed by serious scholars who did not have access to a university library. The private research libraries generally contained extensive scholarly materials on specific subjects. Many of the most notable research libraries in the United States are privately funded institutions. These include the Newberry Library, founded in Chicago, Illinois, and named after business leader and book collector Walter L. Newberry in 1887; the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, started in 1919 by American railway magnate Henry Huntington in San Marino, California; and the Folger Shakespeare Library, which was formed in 1932 in Washington, D.C., from the collection of American industrialist Henry Clay Folger. Private libraries established later in the century include the George C. Marshall Research Library, founded in Lexington, Virginia, in 1964, and the Historic New Orleans Collection, started in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1966 from local documents and artifacts collected by General L. Kemper Williams and Leila Moore Williams.

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