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39 BCE
1st Public Library in Rome
After seeing the great library in Alexandria during his conquest of the city in 47 BC Julius Caesar planned to build a library in Rome. Unfortunately, Caesar died but one of his consuls, Asinius Pollio, continued the work and is given credit for the completion of the first known "public" library in about AD 39. Its purpose was to be a center of learning and study. (History of Information) -
1st Membership Library in US
Benjamin Franklin helped bring the membership library, Library Company, to the colonies. Members could access books as they pleased, and non-members needed to provide collateral to borrow a book. Today it is known as the Philadelphia Library Company. (Rubin, 2020) (History of Public Libraries) -
Philadelphia Library Company of Colored Persons founded
African Americans founded the Philadelphia Library Company of Colored Persons. It was established to serve Philadelphia's black community by providing a place of learning and intellectual exchange. Its main objectives were to build up a collection of useful books on every subject for the benefit of its members and to enlighten its members on literary and scientific subjects. (Rubin) (Brady, H & Abbot, F) (Morris, E.S) (Loc.gov) -
1st Fully Tax-Supported Library founded
Peterborough Town Library in New Hampshire, the 1st totally tax- supported public library was established. It was free and open to the public. Its collection held just 100 books. It paved the way for future public funded libraries. -
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Rapid Expansion of US Public Libraries
By 1920, there were more than 3,500 libraries. This rapid expansion of the US public library can be traced back to steel magnate, Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie funded the building of 2,509 "Carnegie Libraries" worldwide between 1883 and 1929. Of those, 1,795 were in the United States: 1,687 public libraries and 108 academic. -
ALA founded
Melvil Dewey, Justin Winsor, C. A. Cutter, Samuel S. Green, James L. Whitney, Fred B. Perkins, and Thomas W. Bicknell issued a call to librarians to form a professional organization. During the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, 103 librarians, 90 men and 13 women, met and resolved that the mission of the new ALA would be "to enable librarians to do their present work more easily and at less expense." -
1st School of Library Economy founded by Melvil Dewey
Melvil Dewey (1851–1931) founded the first School of Library Economy in 1887 and received the title of professor at Columbia College (university). Dewey developed and promoted the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system has been the foundation of knowledge organization in American libraries since 1876. It is now the most widely used classification system in the world. (Rubin, 2020) (Elliot, 1981) -
1st professionally trained Black librarian
Edward Christopher Williams was the first professionally trained Black librarian in the U.S. Williams attended Western Reserve University, where he became assistant librarian, and then university librarian in 1898. He was also one of the first Black men to join the ALA. -
Z3 First fully functional computer
German engineer Dr. Konrad Zuse built the first fully functional, automatic, programmable, general purpose computer. The Z3 was used for aerodynamic calculations but was destroyed in a bombing raid on Berlin in late 1943. Zuse's developments revolutionized computing forever. (Williams) (1941 Computer History Museum) -
MARC inaugurated
Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) Distribution Service is inaugurated. 1st mailing of computer tapes containing cataloging data. A MARC record contains a guide to its data, or little "signposts," before each piece of bibliographic information. The records in simpler computer files sometimes have a fixed number of fields, and each field contains a fixed number of characters. Though now digital, MARC records are still used in library data today. (loc.gov) -
Library Use Still Alive
Though many think the idea of the public library is antiquated, there were nearly 1.32 billion visits to public libraries during which 2.16 billion items were circulated in 2017. Libraries conducted nearly 240 million reference transactions and offered more than 5.4 million programs attended by more than 118 million people. (Rubin, 2020)