|
The Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) is the public library system of the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. It is the fifth largest public library system in the United States. Like the two other public library systems in New York City, it is an independent nonprofit organization that is funded by the New York City and State governments, the federal government, and private donors. In Fiscal Year 2009, Brooklyn Public Library had the highest program attendance of any public library system in the United States. The library currently promotes itself as Bklyn Public Library. ==History== The first free public library in Brooklyn was that of the collegiate institution established in 1888, the Pratt Institute, founded by Charles Pratt. Available not only for its own students and faculty, the library was also open to the general public at that early time. In 1852, several prominent citizens established the "Brooklyn Athenaeum and Reading Room" for the instruction of young men. It was as was the practice in those times, a private, subscription library for members, who were recruited and encouraged by the up-rising mercantile and business class of young men, to continue by constant reading whatever formal education they had received through a university, college, high school/private academy, or trade school. Its collections focused on the liberal arts and the humanities such as literature, history, biography, economics, philosophy, and other applications later labeled social studies. Five years later, in 1857, another group of young men with businessmen, merchants, manufacturers, founded the "Brooklyn Mercantile Library Association of the City of Brooklyn", with its holdings more pronounced in the fields of business, economics, mathematical, technical, commercial and scientific. The Librarian-in-Charge was Stephen Buttrick Noyes, who later went to the Library of Congress in 1866, but returned to Brooklyn three years later in 1869. He later commenced developing the extensive catalog for the collections which he completed in 1888. Later the two collections were merged in 1869, and later moved to a headquarters building on Montague Street. In 1878, the Library Associations were renamed the "Brooklyn Public Library". The Brooklyn Public Library system was approved by an Act of Legislature of the State of New York on May 1, 1892. The Brooklyn Common Council then passed a resolution for the establishment of the Brooklyn Public Library on November 30, 1896, with Marie E. Craigie as the first director. The first main branch ("central library") moved among various buildings, including a former mansion at 26 Brevoort Place.〔(Building of the Day ) Brownstoner.com〕 〔(Brooklyn's Municipal Library System ) New York Times 15 December 1900〕 Between 1901 and 1923, the famous Scotsman, steel industrialist, financier and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie donated $1.6 million, assisting in the future development and construction of 21 Carnegie Library additional neighborhood branches. Carnegie had been earlier inspired by the bequest, construction and maintenance by local merchant, banker and financier who became a famous philanthropist in his adopted city of Baltimore in Maryland. Enoch Pratt, entertained Mr. Carnegie at his mansion/townhouse on West Monument Street and Park Avenue, during the mid-1880s and toured him around his new public library and its four regional branches, presented to the City in 1886 after four years of planning and construction, along with an endowment to continue its support if supplemented in perpetuity by the City of Baltimore, which it agreed and thus was born the Enoch Pratt Free Library, the oldest public library system in America and affected and inspired many others around America by the examples of Pratt and Carnegie. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Brooklyn Public Library」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|