The 17th and 18th centuries include what is known as a golden age of libraries; during this time some of the more important libraries were founded in Europe. Francis Trigge Chained Library of St. Wulfram's Church, Grantham, Lincolnshire was founded in 1598 by the rector of nearby Welbourne.This library is considered the "ancestor of public libraries" because patrons were not required to be members of a particular college or church to use the library. Trigge's library held over 350 books, and his inclusion of both Catholic and Protestant resources is considered unique for the time, since religious conflicts during the Reformation years were common.Thomas Bodley founded the Bodleian Library in 1602, which was open to the "whole republic of the learned", Chetham's Library in Manchester, which claims to be the oldest public library in the English-speaking world, opened in 1653.
None of these were lending libraries, and they had varying degrees of openness to the general public.Over the course of the 18th century, libraries gradually evolved into lending libraries, but not in the way we recognize the term today. Most were subscription libraries, only open to people who had paid a fee or purchased a share. Only Chetham's Library, in Manchester, England, was fully and freely accessible to the public and it was by no means a lending library. All the books were chained to the shelves.
The earliest lending libraries were circulating libraries, but there were first and foremost a business venture. People were allowed to borrow books if they paid a fee. Subscription libraries prided themselves on respectability, and there was an almost complete elimination of fiction from them. Benjamin Franklin led the founding of the first American subscription library. In Philadelphia, Franklin formed "a club of mutual improvements" calling themselves the "Junto", which meant a council or a combination of individuals organized for a specific purpose. Because the men in this club had a steady income, they could afford to be a part of this club and afford to purchase books. Only some had enough to be considered a library; together they shared what they all had. Over the course of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, subscription libraries began to specialize, for instance, keeping books that would be of interest to skilled workers or tradesmen.
The foundation of the modern public library system in Britain is the Public Libraries Act 1850. The Act first gave local boroughs the power to establish free public libraries and was the first legislative step toward the creation of an enduring national institution that provides universal free access to information and literature. In the 1830s, at the height of the Chartist movement, there was a general tendency towards reformism in the United Kingdom. The Capitalist economic model had created a significant amount of free time for workers, and the middle classes were concerned that the workers' free time was not being well-spent. This was prompted more by Victorian middle class paternalism rather than by demand from the lower social orders.Campaigners felt that encouraging the lower classes to spend their free time on morally uplifting activities, such as reading, would promote greater social good. Nobody thought to ask them what they wanted.
These acts influenced similar laws in other countries, including the US. The first tax-supported public library in the United States was founded on this day in 1833 in the town of Peterborough, New Hampshire, first supported by state funds, and then by an "Act Providing for the Establishment of Public Libraries" in 1849.
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