#subscriptionlibrary

At the Library Company of Philadelphia, it doesn’t get more #VintageLibrary than our original Lion’s Mouth Suggestion Box. 

Benjamin Franklin drafted the Library Company’s plans, rules, and articles of agreement in 1731, after he and a group of like-minded individuals conceived the idea of a subscription library in which all members would pool their financial resources in order to afford a larger and finer library than any one of them could have amassed individually.

The first book order was sent to England on March 31, 1732. The list of books ordered was representative of the kind of books that could be found in any good colonial American, or even English, private library. The largest portion included titles on history and travels, followed by literature. Small segments dealt with the sciences, theology, philosophy, economics, and linguistics. The works were useful because the desire for the books stemmed from the readers themselves as evidenced by the suggestion box, which reads:

Gentlemen are requested to deposite in the lion’s mouth the titles of such books as they may wish to have imported.

Franklin’s ingenious solution to the problem of access to books, the subscription library, was copied up and down the Atlantic seaboard from Salem, Massachusetts, to Charleston, South Carolina.