page_title: History of libraries
section_title: Private libraries
hierarchical_section_title: History of libraries / Enlightenment era libraries / Private libraries
caption_attribution_description: English: Black and white photograph of the Linen Hall Library, formerly the White Linen Hall, Donegall Square, Belfast. Taken from the "History of the Belfast Library and Society for Promoting Knowledge", 1888. Original caption: "Linen Hall Library, 1888"
context_page_description: The history of libraries began with the first efforts to organize collections of documents. Topics of interest include accessibility of the collection, acquisition of materials, arrangement and finding tools, the book trade, the influence of the physical properties of the different writing materials, language distribution, role in education, rates of literacy, budgets, staffing, libraries for specially targeted audiences, architectural merit, patterns of usage, and the role of libraries in a nation's cultural heritage, and the role of government, church or private sponsorship. Since the 1960s, issues of computerization and digitization have arisen.
  Library history is the academic discipline devoted to the study of the history of libraries; it is a subfield of library science and of history.
context_section_description: Private subscription libraries functioned much like commercial subscription libraries, with some variations. One of the most popular versions of the private subscription library was the gentlemen only library. Membership was restricted to the proprietors or shareholders, and ranged from a dozen or two to between four and five hundred.
  The Liverpool Subscription library was a gentlemen only library. In 1798, it was renamed the Athenaeum when it was rebuilt with a newsroom and coffeehouse. It had an entrance fee of one guinea and an annual subscription of five shillings. An analysis of the registers for the first twelve years provides glimpses of middle-class reading habits in a mercantile community at this period. The largest and most popular sections of the library were history, antiquities, and geography, with 283 titles and 6,121 borrowings, and belles-lettres, with 238 titles and 3,313 borrowings.
  Private subscription libraries held a greater amount of control over both membership and the types of books in the library. Cheap fiction was virtually absent. Subscription libraries prided themselves on respectability. The highest percentage of subscribers were often landed proprietors, gentry, and the old professions.
  Towards the end of the 18th century and in the first decades of the 19th century the need for books and general education made itself felt among social classes created by the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. The late 18th century saw a rise in subscription libraries intended for the use of tradesmen. In 1797, there was established at Kendal the Economical Library, "designed principally for the use and instruction of the working classes". There was also the Artizans' library established at Birmingham in 1799. The entrance fee was 3 shillings. The subscription was 1 shilling 6 pence per quarter. This was a library of general literature. Novels, at first excluded, were afterwards admitted on condition that they did not account for more than one-tenth of the annual income.
  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 to purchase books. Only some had enough to be considered a library; together they shared what they all had.
caption: The Linen Hall Library was an 18th-century subscription library. Pictured in 1888, shortly before its demolition.
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