By the time of Franklin’s note, the library company was up to 70 members. Fifty individuals contributed 40 shillings each to create the initial capital for the library company and they were each to contribute 10 shillings per year on an ongoing basis. (Still in business today, the company is online here.) Franklin gave what he termed a “short account” of the library in a Jnote. In 1731, Benjamin Franklin formed a privately financed library that would become The Library Company of Philadelphia. We are entering the age of the private library, or, perhaps I should say returning to it. No physical books were harmed by my reading and highlighting. That is a library no-no, but I do take some comfort in the fact that my highlighter was my finger and the book, Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, was a digital book checked out from Amazon’s Kindle Library. I will also confess that in reading the book, I took out my highlighter and emphasized particularly interesting passages. I have been doing that for most of my life. So it can hardly come as a surprise when I say that I had occasion last week to check a book out from the library and read it. I walk out of my office into book stacks. As I am fond of reminding people, faculty offices at my work home, The University of Chicago Law School, surround the library.
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