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Books and Reading in the Connecticut Western Reserve: The Small-Settlement Social Library, 1800–1860
- Libraries & the Cultural Record
- University of Texas Press
- Volume 46, Number 4, 2011
- pp. 388-411
- 10.1353/lac.2011.0020
- Article
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Encouraged by the Puritan emphasis on literacy and mission, and energized by sociocultural needs and frontier voluntarism, New Englanders and others founded 107 small-settlement proprietary and subscription libraries in the Connecticut Western Reserve (part of present-day northern Ohio) before 1860. This article discusses the background context, organization, administration, patronage, and content of a representative number of these libraries as well as their evolution as predecessors of the tax-supported public library in nineteenth-century Ohio.