The origins of “independent” libraries, as they are now known, date back to the mid-18th century when even the upper middle classes found books and newspapers expensive and decided to pool resources. One of the grandest, The Portico in Manchester, was opened in 1806. It was funded by 400 of the city’s wealthiest men, who each gave around 30 guineas for a share (the equivalent of 18 months’ wages for a framework knitter) followed by a smaller annual subscription.
The Portico Library (Source: Independent Library Association)
[Clip]
The jewel in the crown of Independent Libraries is the London Library in St James’s Square (membership costs about £500 a year). It is breathtaking in its scope — 17 miles of shelving and around 1m books. But around the country there are dozens of other gems — whether it is Newcastle’s stunning Lit & Phil, the Devon & Exeter Institution or the country’s oldest surviving subscription library, The Leeds Library, which celebrated its 250th anniversary last year. Check out your nearest by visiting the Independent Libraries Association website, but if you do unearth a local treasure, don’t tell too many people — they’ll all want to join.
The London Library (Source: Independent Library Association)
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.
From the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA): The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has posted its . A draft Customer Research Agenda was open for public review and comment ...
From MIT Technology Review: Hidden patterns purposely buried in AI-generated texts could help identify them as such, allowing us to tell whether the words we’re reading are written by a ...
From the Congressional Research Service: Nearly one in four Americans has a disability, according to 2018 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Congress has recognized that in addition to making ...
From The NY Times: When [Joan] Didion died in 2021 at age 87, the news set off an outpouring of tributes to a writer who fused penetrating insight and idiosyncratic personal voice, ...
Below, Find the Full Text of a Letter Sent to the Carolina Community From Kevin M. Guskiewicz University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz and J. ...
From the Boston Public Library: The Boston Public Library is proud to contribute to the celebration of Black History Month with its annual “Black Is…” booklist. The booklist aims to commemorate ...
From NYU Langone: Researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, unveiled the Congressional District Health Dashboard (CDHD), a new online tool that ...
From a cOAlition S Announcement: Transformative arrangements – including Transformative Agreements and Transformative Journals – were developed to encourage subscription journals to transition to full and immediate open access within a defined timeframe (31st December 2024, ...
From the Library of Congress: The Library of Congress announced today the appointment of Hannah Sommers as the new Associate Librarian for Researcher and Collections Services in the Library Collections and Services Group. In this role, Sommers will lead the future of the Library’s collections and the services it delivers to researchers and users. She will be central ...
As Book Bans Increase Across the Country, a Boston University Scholar is Fighting Back Core’s Library Resources & Technical Services Journal Goes Fully Open Access Digital Image Processing: It’s All ...
Here’s the Full Text of the Library Freedom Project (LFP) Announcement: Library Freedom Project (LFP) has been awarded $1,000,000 from the Mellon Foundation to expand the program’s work. For ...
From a NVIDIA Blog Post: For the past 500 years, the National Library of Sweden has collected virtually every word published in Swedish, from priceless medieval manuscripts to present-day pizza ...
