[Web4lib] Facebook for Library Outreach : Don't Be Left In The Dust...

[Tom Keays]

On Jan 14, 2008 8:52 PM, Casey Bisson <cbisson at plymouth.edu> wrote:
> I doubt the patrons of an average bar would welcome libraries if we
> tried to set up shop there, and not just because we'd get nitpicky
> about the weekly trivia games. Bars and libraries are both social
> spaces, but that doesn't make them equivalent spaces.

Oooh. This is going to be off-topic, but I can't resist. A couple of
years ago, I learned that there are a number of public libraries in
the US that got their start in places where men would typically gather
socially -- often taverns, sometimes athletic clubs, oft-times both --
and create a shared reading library as a means of self-improvement.

Here's a representative example describing how these worked. I find
this a fascinating bit of history.
http://www.northfieldpubliclibrary.org/dmlhistory.htm

In 1813, Northfield was a prosperous village of shops and farms and
multiple small manufacturers. As the nation and the town turned its
attention to the War of 1812, a small group of residents met in
Houghton's Tavern and formed the Social Library corporation. Led by
Thomas Power, a young lawyer from Boston, the Northfield Social
Library was the first in the county to be formed under a 1798 act of
the General Court which granted the "proprietors" of such a library
the right "to manage the same."

The original proprietors of the Northfield Social Library included
members of some of the town's oldest and most prominent families.
Meeting for the first time on February 4, 1813, the proprietors each
paid $4--then roughly a month's salary for a day laborer-for the
privilege of membership in the Social Library. That money, plus fines
for lost or overdue books, went to the purchase of books. By the end
of 1813, the library listed seventy works of non-fiction, all housed
at Houghton's Tavern, located conveniently in the center of town. By
1825, the number of titles held by the Social Library had risen to
500, many of them of a religious nature, perhaps a reflection of the
tastes of the chair of the purchasing committee, the Reverend Thomas
Mason.

Fifty years later, by which time the Social Library had relocated to
the former Parson boot factory on the southern end of Main Street, the
shareholders voted to relinquish their control of the now almost
thousand volume collection. In 1878, the proprietors of the Northfield
Social Library leased to the town for a period of 900 years the
contents of the library, "on condition that the town spend at least
$100 a year for new books." The town agreed to these terms and the
Northfield Public Library was soon opened in Town Hall until such time
that a generous benefactor would come forward and provide a suitable
building. Twenty years later, such a benefactor made possible the
construction of the building now known as the Dickinson Memorial
Library. His name was Elijah Marsh Dickinson.

Tom