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`TO PETITIONER GOOGLE INC.’S
`PETITION FOR COVERED BUSINESS
`METHOD REVIEW OF
`U.S. PATENT NO. 8,118,221
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`History of Libraries in the
`Western World
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`Fourth Edition
`
`Michael H. Harris
`
`The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
`Lanham, Maryland, and London
`1999
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`SCARECROW PRESS, INC.
`
`Published in the United States of America
`by Scarecrow Press, Inc.
`4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
`http://www.scarecrowpress.com
`
`4 Pleydell Gardens, Folkestone
`Kent CT20 2DN, England
`
`Previous volumes include:
`A History of Libraries in the Western World by Elmer Johnson, Scarecrow Press. New
`York and London, 1965.
`History of Libraries in the Western World, Second Edition by Elmer D. Johnson,
`Scarecrow Press. Metuchen, N.J., 1970.
`History of Libraries in the Western World, Third Edition,completely revised by Elmer
`D. Johnson and Michael H. Harris, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, N.J., 1976.
`History of Libraries in the Western World, Compact Text Edition by Michael H.
`Harris, Scarecrow Press. Metuchen, N.J., 1984.
`
`Copyright ©1995, 1999 by Michael H. Harris
`First paperback edition published in 1999
`
`All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
`stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
`means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
`without the prior permission of the publisher.
`
`British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
`
`The hardback edition of this book was previously catalogued by the Library of
`Congress as follows:
`
`Harris, Michael H.
`History of libraries in the western world / Michael H. Harris.--4th ed.
`p. cm.
`Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
`1. Libraries--History. II. Title.
`Z721.H227 (cid:9)
`1995
`027'.000--dc20 (cid:9)
`
`94-41627
`
`ISBN 13: 978-0-810-86724-9
`
`eruThe paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
`
`American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of
`Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
`Manufactured in the United States of America.
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`186 (cid:9)
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`Modern Library Development in the West
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`throughout the industrialized cities of America in order to "promote
`orderly and virtuous habits, diffuse knowledge and the desire for
`knowledge, improve the scientific skill," and generally make effec-
`tive citizens and productive workers of the mechanics working in
`America's factories, and the mercantile clerks training for manage-
`ment of her commerce.
`The organization of the social library was usually very simple. In
`the smaller ones, there was little or no attempt to arrange the books
`except in general classifications, but in the larger collections more
`serious attempts were made at cataloging, ranging from simple
`manuscript accession records to printed alphabetical or classified
`lists. Housing for the collection might be in a public building, a
`member's home or business, or, for larger collections, a separate
`rented or owned building. Hours of opening ranged from a few hours
`one or two days per week to fairly regular schedules of eight to ten
`hours daily. An attendant, volunteer or paid, charged books and
`checked on their return in the smaller collections, but the larger ones
`had more or less full-time "librarians." As early as 1793, a pamphlet
`had been written to advise the book selectors for social libraries on
`the best methods of obtaining books and the best books to be chosen.
`This was the Selected Catalogue of Some of the Most Esteemed Publications
`in the English Language Proper to Form a Social Libraty, written by
`Thaddeus Mason Harris, who had served for a short time as a librarian
`at Harvard. His booklet was one of the earliest American works on
`book selection, and as such it is interesting. He divided all books into
`three classes: memory, reason, and imagination. The first class
`included all phases of history, biography, and travel; the second,
`science, philosophy, and religion; and the third, poetry drama,
`fiction, and art. In all, he recommended only eighty-one titles, but
`these were well selected for the time and purpose. Ordinarily, the
`smaller social libraries bought only a few new books each year, but
`collectively they made up a major book market, so the book
`publishers and dealers soon came to offer them special discounts to
`secure their trade.
`The social library proved an efficient means for meeting the
`growing reading appetite of America's rapidly increasing population.
`However, it was characterized by a fatal flaw—the principle of
`voluntary support—and as Jesse H. Shera has noted, "the shifting
`sands" of voluntary support were proving inadequate to the task of
`supporting the widespread and efficient library service so desired by
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`Libraries in America to 1850 (cid:9)
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`187
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`library advocates throughout the nation. Especially troublesome was
`the tendency of social libraries to fail during hard financial times.
`The depressions of 1819, 1837, and 1857 all pressed severe economic
`deprivation upon the nation, and people were forced to withdraw
`support from all sorts of cultural and recreational activities, includ-
`ing social libraries. As a consequence, many American communities
`lost their library service every time the region experienced difficult
`financial times. Such instability was simply unacceptable to those
`who believed that libraries were essential, for whatever reason, to the
`success of the Republic. Their efforts to discover a form of support
`which would be capable of bringing stability and energy to library
`service led them eventually to the idea of supporting libraries with
`public tax funds.
`Thus the many variations on the social library model first
`formulated by Franklin and his young friends in Philadelphia
`constitute a significant chapter in the unfolding story of the rise of
`the public library. Indeed, when the public library was established in
`the latter half of the 19th century, it either absorbed the local social
`library or, in many cases, actually found its origins in the gift of the
`collection belonging to the social library. At any rate, social libraries
`had limited futures once public libraries were established in their
`respective communities, and only the unique, or those boasting the
`most impressive of traditions—like the Library Company of Phila-
`delphia—are still in existence.
`The nation's social libraries were generally promoted as serious
`sources of knowledge for those who desired to improve themselves.
`They did not, at least openly, cater to the public taste for romance
`and popular fiction, choosing instead to purchase only the best
`nonfiction and some few classic works of fiction. The public's
`voracious appetite for romance was filled by libraries designed as
`commercial ventures and aimed at stocking only the most popular
`and exciting of the new fiction. These libraries, called "circulating"
`libraries, made their first appearance just prior to the American
`Revolution.
`Maintained usually by printshops or bookstores, these "libraries"
`made available rental books for a small fee, either a book at a time or
`a number of books over a given period of time. Possibly the first of
`these rental collections was opened by William Rind in Annapolis,
`Maryland, in 1762. He proposed to allow his customers the use of
`two books at a time for an annual fee of twenty-seven shillings. His
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`Modern Library Development in the West
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`venture was ur uccessful and it was discontinued in 1764. However,
`the idea caught on and by 1765 or a little later, there were rental
`collections in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Charleston. One
`in Boston, begun by John Mein, was particularly ambitious and
`published A catalog of some 1,200 titles available for rent at the rate
`of twenty-eight shillings a year for all that one could read, one
`volume at a time. Unfortunately, since Mein was a Loyalist, as the
`Revolution approached he was forced to leave the city. In New York,
`Samuel Loudon's circulating library offered some 2,000 titles to
`discriminating readers in the early 1770s, and some of his most
`popular volumes were poetry.
`The circulating library was to have its greatest success in the
`' half-century after the Revolution, and it should be noted that most of
`the enterprises that rented books also sold them. Booksellers were
`common in the larger towns before 1775, with Philadelphia having
`at least twenty-five sellers of books advertising before that date. Their
`basic bookstock usually consisted of primers and other textbooks,
`prayer books, and dictionaries, with the local laws and almanacs
`being regular items. Besides these, the average buyer could find
`sermons, current political tracts, and some literature, but the heavier
`works found in most private libraries were probably ordered from
`England.
`While the purely commercial circulating library increased in
`numbers after the Revolution, its cultural importance was probably
`negligible when compared to the social libraries. For one thing it was
`restricted, as was the bookstore of which it was usually a part, to the
`larger towns. It depended upon a reading public somewhat different
`from that of the social library—more on the casual reader than the
`serious one. It was usually small, but occasionally in old, established
`stores it reached several thousand volumes. Caritat's Circulating
`Library in New York City, opened in 1797, had over 5,000 volumes
`in its catalog of 1804, including more than 1,000 titles of fiction.
`Even more than the social library, the circulating library reflected
`popular reading tastes, but unfortunately there are few surviving
`records of the bookstocks of those commercial ventures, much less
`any counts of their actual use. An interesting example of a circulating
`library was the "Book Boat" that flourished on the Erie Canal for a
`generation after 1830. Going from Albany to Buffalo and back, the
`boat would tie up at a wharf for a few hours or even a few days at a
`time, and rent its literature, varying from sermons to joke books, at
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