Books were not widely available to the general public in the United States until the mid-1800s. In the 1700s, wealthy people with access to books hosted literary salons. These were events where the participants could discuss fiction and nonfiction literature.
Benjamin Franklin established the first subscription library. It was funded by membership fees, and the collection was available only to members. In 1790, Franklin donated over one hundred books to a library in Franklin, Pennsylvania, a town named in his honor. This is considered the first American public library. Between 1883 and 1929, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie funded over two thousand public libraries across the country. Eight of these were in North Dakota.
As wonderful as free libraries were, access wasn’t always easy for people outside larger towns. This was especially true on the Great Plains, where people lived great distances from population centers. So, on this date in 1910, the Public Library Commission of Bismarck announced a plan to address the problem by creating a Farmers’ Library.
The Farmers’ Library would serve rural dwellers. Farmers were instructed to form book clubs of at least six members. Each club would have a secretary who would send member names to the Library Commission along with a request for a Farmer’s Library. A box of fifteen books on agricultural topics would be shipped to the secretary, and each member of the club could borrow one of the books and keep it for two to four weeks before returning it to the secretary and borrowing another. After six months, the secretary would ship the books back to Bismarck and could request another library. The only cost for the program was the return shipping, which amounted to about fifty cents.
In addition to the Farmers’ Library, the Commission also sponsored a traveling library. This collection included books on topics of interest to all members of the family, offering both fiction and nonfiction. The Library Commission noted: “no one living in a rural community need envy the city dweller his opportunity of reading all he cares to without any expense to him.”
Today, in many of North Dakota’s rural communities, bookmobiles carry on the tradition of providing books to folks who don’t have easy access to brick and mortar libraries.
Dakota Datebook by Carole Butcher
Sources:
Hope Pioneer. “Traveling Library.” Hope ND, 7/7/1910, page 5.
Digital Public Library of America. “A History of US Public Libraries.” https://dp.la/exhibitions/history-us-public-libraries/beginnings/ Accessed 5/23/2021.
