In time, the little group hired a room to meet in and [Benjamin] Franklin proposed that each member of the group lodge his books there, where they could be consulted and borrowed by all. It then occurred to him, in 1731, to start a public library with subscribers wherein members paid an entrance fee plus annual dues. The monies went toward enlarging the collection or paying rent on the room or rooms where books were kept.

In Franklin’s initial trial, fifty people were found willing to give 40 shillings each plus 10 shillings per year for the purchase of books. Their first order included the works of Homer, Plutarch, Xenophon, and Tacitus; modern histories, grammars, dictionaries, and encyclopedias; treatises on mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy, botany, natural history, architecture, farming, and surveying; The Complete Tradesman (a popular book on commerce); and the works of Dryden, Addison, and Steele - a pretty good nucleus on which to build.

The ideas soon spread, and by 1775 perhaps seventy such libraries had been formed throughout the colonies. ‘These libraries,’ wrote Franklin, ‘have improved the general conversation of the Americans, made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries, and contributed in some degree’ by such enlightenment (he ventured) to the determination of Americans to stand up for their rights.