Carnegie library

Background

Books and libraries were important to Carnegie, from his early childhood in Scotland and his teen years in Allegheny and Pittsburgh. There he listened to readings and discussions of books from the Tradesman's Subscription Library, which his father had helped create. Later in Pennsylvania, while working for the local telegraph company in Pittsburgh, Carnegie borrowed books from the personal library of Colonel James Anderson (1785-1861). He opened his collection to his workers every Saturday. Anderson, like Carnegie, resided in Allegheny.

In his autobiography, Carnegie credited Anderson with providing an opportunity for "working boys" (that some people said should not be "entitled to books") to acquire the knowledge to improve themselves. Carnegie's personal experience as an immigrant, who with help from others worked his way and became wealthy, reinforced his belief in a society based on merit, where anyone who worked hard could become successful. This conviction was a major element of his philosophy of giving in general. His libraries were the best-known expression of this philanthropic goal. In 1900, Carnegie granted funds to build the Anderson Memorial Library, in memory of Colonel John Byers Anderson, at the College of Emporia.

Carnegie formula

Nearly all of Carnegie's libraries were built according to "the Carnegie formula", which required financial commitments for maintenance and operation from the town that received the donation. Carnegie required public support rather than making endowments because, as he wrote:

an endowed institution is liable to become the prey of a clique. The public ceases to take interest in it, or, rather, never acquires interest in it. The rule has been violated which requires the recipients to help themselves. Everything has been done for the community instead of its being only helped to help itself.

Carnegie required the elected officials—the local government—to:

• demonstrate the need for a public library;
• provide the building site;
• pay staff and maintain the library;
• draw from public funds to run the library—not use only private donations;
• annually provide ten percent of the cost of the library's construction to support its operation; and,
• provide free service to all.

Carnegie assigned the decisions to his assistant James Bertram. He created a "Schedule of Questions". The schedule included: Name, status and population of town, Does it have a library? Where is it located and is it public or private? How many books? Is a town-owned site available? Estimation of the community's population at this stage was done by local officials, and Bertram later commented that if the population counts he received were accurate, "the nation's population had mysteriously doubled".

The effects of Carnegie's library philanthropy coincided with a peak in new town development and library expansion in the US. By 1890, many states had begun to take an active role in organizing public libraries, and the new buildings filled a tremendous need. It was also a time of rapid development of institutions of higher learning. Interest in libraries was also heightened at a crucial time in their early development by Carnegie's high profile and his genuine belief in their importance.

In Canada in 1901, Carnegie offered more than $2.5 million to build 125 libraries. Most cities at first turned him down, then eventually took the money.

In 1902, Carnegie offered funds to build a library in Dunedin in New Zealand. Between 1908 and 1916, 18 Carnegie libraries were opened across New Zealand.

Design

The Lawrenceville Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh signaled a break from the Richardsonian style of libraries which was popularized in the mid 1800s. The ALA discouraged Richardsonian characteristics such as alcoved book halls with high shelves requiring a ladder, as well as sheltered galleries and niches, reminiscent of sixteenth-century Europe, largely because modern librarians could not supervise such spaces efficiently.

Bertram's architectural criteria included a lecture room, reading rooms for adults and children, a staff room, a centrally located librarian's desk, twelve-to-fifteen-foot ceilings, and large windows six to seven feet above the floor. No architectural style was recommended for the exterior, nor was it necessary to put Andrew Carnegie's name on the building. In the interests of efficiency, fireplaces were discouraged, since that wall space could be used to house more books.

There were no strict requirements about furniture, but most of it came from the Library Bureau, established by Melvil Dewey in 1888. It sold standardized chairs, tables, catalogs, and bookshelves.

Self-service stacks

The first five Carnegie libraries followed a closed stacks policy, the method of operation common to libraries at that time. Patrons requested a book from a library staffer, who would fetch the book from closed stacks off limits to the public, and bring it to a delivery desk.

To reduce operating costs, Carnegie created a revolutionary open-shelf or self-service policy, beginning with the Pittsburgh neighborhood branches that opened after the main branch. This streamlined process allowed patrons to have open access to shelves. Carnegie's architects designed the Pittsburgh neighborhood branches so that one librarian could oversee each entire operation.

Theft of books and other items was a major concern. This concern resulted in the placement of the library's circulation desk—which replaced the delivery desk used in traditional closed stacks libraries—just inside the front door. Bigger and more daunting than those used in modern libraries, these desks spanned almost the width of the lobby and acted as a physical and psychological barrier between the front entrance and the book room.

The first of these "open stack" branches was in Lawrenceville, the sixth Carnegie library to open in America. The next was in the West End branch, the eighth Carnegie library in the US. Patricia Lowry describes

located just beyond the lobby, the circulation desk—no longer a delivery desk—took center stage in Lawrenceville, flanked by turnstiles that admitted readers to the open stacks one at a time, under the librarian's watchful eye. To thwart thievery, the stacks were arranged in a radial pattern. On each side of the lobby were a general reading room and, for the first time in a library anywhere, a room for children.... The reading rooms were separated by walls that became glass partitions above waist level—the better to see you with, my dear.

Walter E. Langsam, an architectural historian and teacher at the University of Cincinnati, wrote "The Carnegie libraries were important because they had open stacks which encouraged people to browse .... People could choose for themselves what books they wanted to read." This open stacks policy was later adopted by the libraries that previously had operated with closed stacks.

Criticisms

The first secretary of the Iowa Library Commission, Alice S. Taylor, criticized the use of Carnegie funding for extravagant buildings rather than providing quality library services. Carnegie's funds covered only the library buildings themselves, and Carnegie gave library buildings to cities on the condition that the cities stocked and maintained them. As a result, small communities often struggled with maintenance costs associated with Carnegie libraries; towns were often happy to accept funding for new library buildings, but often unwilling to allocate taxes for upkeep. In fact, this was the most frequent complaint about Carnegie libraries in hindsight: gifting libraries to towns too small to support them actually slowed the development of cooperative regional libraries that those communities now rely on.

Some critics also saw his massive donations as insulting to communities that would be content to fund their own public works. Others saw his push for public libraries as merely an attempt at social control. Mark Twain, a supporter of Carnegie, claimed that Carnegie used philanthropy as a tool to buy fame. William Jewett Tucker criticized Carnegie's philanthropy from a religious viewpoint, arguing that it did not offset his "immoral" accumulation of wealth, and that his contributions did not justify the "evils" Tucker claimed existed in capitalism itself. Carnegie's own steel workers echoed this sentiment, arguing that his wealth would be better spent on improving working conditions for his own employees, rather than on library buildings across the country. Carnegie's response to those criticisms and the ensuing Homestead Steel Strike was telling of what he thought of his workers' concerns: "If I had raised your wages, you would have spent that money by buying a better cut of meat or more drink for your dinner. But what you needed, though you didn't know it, was my libraries and concert halls."

Carnegie's critics can be most efficiently summed up in the words of Finley Peter Dunne's parody of Carnegie himself: "Th' way to abolish poverty an' bust crime is to put up a brown-stone buildin' in ivry town in th' counthry." The idea that a building would be the panacea to cure all of society's ills, they argued, was simply not sustainable.

A further issue was the impact on pre-existing religious libraries that had promoted learning through free libraries for many years. A typical example is the United Presbyterian Library of Edinburgh, under Robert James Drummond which was affected following the opening of the Carnegie Library in the city centre.

In addition to the criticisms of his philanthropic interests and motivations, the construction of libraries in the American South was a highly contentious topic. State and local racial segregation laws across the South sought to bar African Americans access to public facilities, including libraries and when funding the construction of the Carnegie library in Atlanta in 1902, the proposed library, a segregated one, was fought by numerous activists of the period, including W. E. B. Du Bois. In the years following, as the American Library Association continued to ignore the systematic implementation of Jim Crow in the South, the Carnegie Corporation also continued to acquiesce to the social norms of the day and even required communities seeking grants to base their appropriations "only upon the White population of the towns."

Continuing legacy

Carnegie established charitable trusts which have continued his philanthropic work. But they had reduced their investment in libraries even before his death. There has continued to be support for library projects, for example in South Africa.

In 1992, The New York Times reported that, according to a survey conducted by George Bobinski, dean of the School of Information and Library Studies at the State University at Buffalo, 1,554 of the 1,681 original Carnegie library buildings in the United States still existed, and 911 were still used as libraries. He found that 276 were unchanged, 286 had been expanded, 175 had been remodeled, 243 had been demolished, and others had been converted to other uses.

While hundreds of the library buildings have been adapted for use as museums, community centers, office buildings, residences, or other uses, more than half of those in the United States still serve their communities as libraries over a century after their construction. Many are located in what are now middle- to low-income neighborhoods. For example, Carnegie libraries still form the nucleus of the New York Public Library system in New York City, with 31 of the original 39 buildings still in operation; Carnegie Libraries operate in all 5 Boroughs of New York City across its three library systems. Also, the main library and eighteen branches of the Pittsburgh public library system are Carnegie libraries. The public library system there is named the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

In the late 1940s, the Carnegie Corporation of New York arranged for microfilming of the correspondence files relating to Andrew Carnegie's gifts and grants to communities for the public libraries and church organs. They discarded the original materials. The microfilms are open for research as part of the Carnegie Corporation of New York Records collection, residing at Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Archivists did not microfilm photographs and blueprints of the Carnegie Libraries. The number and nature of documents within the correspondence files varies widely. Such documents may include correspondence, completed applications and questionnaires, newspaper clippings, illustrations, and building dedication programs.

UK correspondence files relating to individual libraries have been preserved in Edinburgh (see the article List of Carnegie libraries in Europe).

Beginning in the 1930s during the Great Depression, some libraries were meticulously measured, documented and photographed under the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) program of the National Park Service. This was part of an effort to record and preserve significant buildings. Other documentation has been collected by local historical societies. In 1935, the centennial of Carnegie's birth, a copy of the portrait of him originally painted by F. Luis Mora was given to libraries which he had helped fund. Many of the Carnegie libraries in the United States, whatever their current uses, have been recognized by listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The first, the Carnegie Library in Braddock, Pennsylvania, was designated as a National Historic Landmark in March 2012.

"To this day, Carnegie's free-to-the-people libraries remain Pittsburgh's most significant cultural export, a gift that has shaped the minds and lives of millions."

— Architectural critic Patricia Lowry

Lists of Carnegie libraries

• List of Carnegie libraries in Africa
• List of Carnegie libraries in the Caribbean
• List of Carnegie libraries in Oceania
• List of Carnegie libraries in Canada
• List of Carnegie libraries in Europe
• List of Carnegie libraries in the United States