Between 1883 and 1929, Andrew Carnegie used his wealth to build 2,509 libraries around the world. 1,679 of those libraries are in the United States. For his generosity he came to be known as the Patron Saint of Libraries.

Carnegie had two reasons for his philanthropy. First, he believed that America was a meritocracy and that his libraries would benefit immigrants. Carnegie himself was a Scottish immigrant. He was poor and worked full-time at the age of twelve. But his is a rags-to-riches story as he achieved fame and success by building a steel manufacturing empire.

Carnegie’s second reason for building libraries came from his belief that great wealth would only accumulate to a few and those few had a moral obligation to give their fortune away to benefit society before they died.

It seems to me that the idea of building libraries came from his childhood library experience. Carnegie educated himself in a 400 book library that was started by Colonel Anderson. The Colonel lent these books on Saturday afternoons to local boys. In 1920 Carnegie wrote of his experience in Colonel Anderson’s library, “This is but a slight tribute and gives only a faint idea of the depth of gratitude which I feel for what he did for me and my companions. It was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to which money could be applied so productive of good to boys and girls who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it, as the founding of a public library in a community.”

Further Reading:

There is also much available on the web if you are looking for a particular Carnegie library.

Thank you for celebrating National Library Week with me. I enjoyed using the database searching skills I am currently learning in class to help me find some of the factoid information during the week.

I will try to catch up on all of your wonderful comments over the weekend.

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