Reading Public Library

The Reading Public Library (RPL) is the main public library of the City of Reading, Pennsylvania and the district library center (DLC) of Berks County. RPL’s services and collections serve the City of Reading, its suburbs, greater Berks County, and beyond.

History

Founded as an English subscription library in 1763, Reading Public Library is one of the oldest, though not continuously operating, libraries in the United States. It wasn’t until 1913 that the Main Library as it currently stands was built through the generosity of Andrew Carnegie. After a major fundraising campaign in 1989, the Main Library was renovated and modernized through a variety of projects during 1990-1993. It is the sixth oldest public library in the United States.

Branch Libraries

An increase in the number of users and the changing collection needs over the years have prompted the construction of three Branches. Southeast Branch Library (1974), Northeast Branch Library (1974), and Northwest Branch Library (1939). City Bookmobile services were added in 1951. The Main Library, all three Branches, and the Bookmobile readily share books and other materials to further facilitate complete coverage of the community's needs.

Reading Public Library (Massachusetts)

The Reading Public Library is located at 64 Middlesex Avenue in Reading, Massachusetts. Previously known as the Highland School, the two story brick and concrete Renaissance Revival building was designed by architect Horace G. Wadlin and built in 1896-97. The building served the town's public school needs until 1981. It is the town's most architecturally distinguished school building. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, the year it was converted for use as the library.

Description and history

The Highland School building is set on the south side of Middlesex Avenue in the Reading Highlands area of Reading, west of the town's central business district. It is a two-story brick building with concrete and granite trim elements, a hip roof, and a high brick foundation separated from the body by a band of egg-and-dart molding. The body of the building is in pale yellow brick, while the foundation bricks are a darker reddish color. The front facade has projecting sections at each corner, and a center section that projects a shorter distance, but is fronted by a hip-roofed porte-cochere, supported by paired Ionic columns set brick piers connected by a wooden balustrade. The porte-cochere shelters the main entrance, which is recessed under a round-arch opening and accessed by stairs. The second level of the center projection has a bank of five round-arch windows.

Print culture

Print culture embodies all forms of printed text and other printed forms of visual communication. One prominent scholar in the field is Elizabeth Eisenstein, who contrasted print culture, which appeared in Europe in the centuries after the advent of the Western printing-press (and much earlier in China where woodblock printing was used from 594 AD), to scribal culture. Walter Ong, by contrast, has contrasted written culture, including scribal, to oral culture. Ong is generally considered one of the first scholars to define print culture in contrast to oral culture. These views are related as the printing press brought a vast rise in literacy, so that one of its effects was simply the great expansion of written culture at the expense of oral culture. The development of printing, like the development of writing itself, had profound effects on human societies and knowledge. "Print culture" refers to the cultural products of the printing transformation.

In terms of image-based communication, a similar transformation came in Europe from the fifteenth century on with the introduction of the old master print and, slightly later, popular prints, both of which were actually much quicker in reaching the mass of the population than printed text.

Public library

For public libraries in North America, see Public libraries in North America.

A public library is a library that is accessible by the general public and is generally funded from public sources, such as taxes. It is operated by librarians and library paraprofessionals, who are also civil servants.

There are five fundamental characteristics shared by public libraries. The first is that they are generally supported by taxes (usually local, though any level of government can and may contribute); they are governed by a board to serve the public interest; they are open to all, and every community member can access the collection; they are entirely voluntary in that no one is ever forced to use the services provided; and they provide basic services without charge.

Public libraries exist in many countries across the world and are often considered an essential part of having an educated and literate population. Public libraries are distinct from research libraries, school libraries, and other special libraries in that their mandate is to serve the general public's information needs rather than the needs of a particular school, institution, or research population. Public libraries also provide free services such as preschool story times to encourage early literacy, quiet study and work areas for students and professionals, or book clubs to encourage appreciation of literature in adults. Public libraries typically allow users to borrow books and other materials, i.e., take off the premises temporarily; they also have non-circulating reference collections and provide computer and Internet access to patrons.

Public Libraries (journal)

Public Libraries is the official trade journal of the Public Library Association, a division of the American Library Association. It is devoted exclusively to public libraries. The print edition is published six times a year and is a delayed open access journal, with older issues available as PDFs on the journal's website.

Early history

Public Libraries' first issue came out in May 1896. According to its Prospectus, the magazine came about as a response to "many letters of inquiry...which the larger libraries receive from the smaller ones in every part of the country" about the "small details and elementary principles of [library] work."<ref name=""Prospectus">Public Libraries 1.1 (1896): 3."></ref>

[Public Libraries] will deal with all phases of library work in a concise, simple way, such as will give the best aid to those who need it." To that end, the Prospectus outlined what the magazine set out to cover in 1896--"a large variety of items of news, such as will encourage and inspire small libraries as well as large, to put forth their best effort to accomplish something of value to the library world." The first issue contains the outline of a future ALA publication, the "ALA Library Primer" which concerns itself with both practical and philosophical concerns about establishing a library, such as suggestions for selecting books ("Every library building should be planned specially for the kind of work to be done, and the community to be served" and the qualities that should be looked for when hiring a librarian ("The librarian should have culture, scholarship, and executive ability.")