There were few books available during the early American Colonial Period. In 1731, Benjamin Franklin spearheaded the first lending library when he and a group of like-minded individuals pooled their resources to purchase an assortment of books. The library was funded and supported by its shareholders, according to the Library Company of Philadelphia website.
On March 18, 1848, the Great and General Court of Massachusetts authorized the city of Boston to implement a publicly funded library. The Boston Public Library opened 16 days later as the first large free municipal library in America, according to the Boston Public Library website.
Andrew Carnegie, a 19th-century industrialist, started life as a poor Scottish immigrant with no access to formal education and died a millionaire. He believed in the power of self-education, so he donated more than $40 million at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries to pay for 1,679 new library buildings across America.