{"id":3204,"date":"2013-03-24T08:00:25","date_gmt":"2013-03-24T15:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=3204"},"modified":"2013-03-23T23:09:34","modified_gmt":"2013-03-24T06:09:34","slug":"americas-first-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=3204","title":{"rendered":"America&#8217;s first library"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=floatRight width=150 src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/c\/cc\/BenFranklinDuplessis.jpg\/220px-BenFranklinDuplessis.jpg\">Leave it to Benjamin Franklin to conceive of the idea of a shared lending library.  He hypothesized that a group with pooled resources could build a book collection that would go beyond the means of any individual member.  In 1731, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.librarycompany.org\/\">Library Company of Philadelphia<\/a> was incorporated as a subscription library.  <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Library_Company_of_Philadelphia\">Wikipedia<\/a> cites this motivation for the library&#8217;s creation:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;&#8230; they had discovered that their far-ranging conversations on intellectual and political themes foundered at times on a point of fact that might be found in a decent library.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Members paid 40 shillings to join and 10 shillings per year after that.  This library still exists today (with about 500,000 books) and still works under a subscription model ($200 to join and $100 per year). <\/p>\n<p>In addition to benefiting its direct subscribers, the Library Company offered free access for delegates to the Continental Congress and Constitutional Conventions in 1774 &#8211; 1787.  Perhaps they, too, stood to benefit from resolving points of fact that arose during debate.  Hooray for fact-based discussion and resolution of arguments! Thank you, libraries one and all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leave it to Benjamin Franklin to conceive of the idea of a shared lending library. He hypothesized that a group with pooled resources could build a book collection that would go beyond the means of any individual member. In 1731, the Library Company of Philadelphia was incorporated as a subscription library. Wikipedia cites this motivation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[47,64],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3204"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3210,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3204\/revisions\/3210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}