History of School Libraries

Libraries have a long and interesting history in this country. Most of us know

Ben Franklin and a group of his contemporaries established the first public library in Philadelphia in 1731 that could truly be called a lending library. And many of us know that Thomas Jefferson donated the books that inaugurated the Library of Congress, but ask the average American when and where the first school libraries began and the answer is likely to be, “I don’t know.” School libraries, while pretty well entrenched in many modern school districts today, have not always been the standard.

Early colonial schools were usually one room, but they did have books. The teacher often bought the books themselves or they were given to the school by the families of the children who attended the classes. The Bible was usually present along with some early literature and Franklin’s ideas were applied by the Penn Charter School in 1744, but the school library we know today was still many years away.

The watershed year for libraries in the United States is 1876. According to several sources, most notably, the ALA many important events took place that year. The United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education published a report, Public Libraries in the United States of America, Their History, Condition and Management, Library Journal was first published, and Melvin Dewey publishes his master work, Dewey decimal classification. Also, that year Melvin Dewey, Justin Winsor, and William Frederick Poole helped establish the American Library Association. Another noted development was Charles Cutter’s statement on the status of cataloging and his creation of a standard. The next few years saw more changes in the way libraries were viewed. (Falcon)

Melvin Dewey started what is commonly called the first school library at Columbia University. In Dewey first annual report he wrote, “Anything and everything that increases his knowledge of books will be directly valuable to the librarian, but the time can be much better spent after some instruction, and the list of the best books to read in this field is deferred.”

(http://www.libr.org/rory/wbm2.html) He was devoted to creating a standard for professional librarians. To which he established many of the standards we still use today.

A few years later in 1890 the first statewide organization was formed, New York Library Association or NYLA for short. This help lead to the 1892 legislation in New York that developed a model for school libraries. Four years later the National Education Association caught up with New York and created its own library section. (Falcon)