Research on library services

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Today it is hard to imagine a library without young patrons, but the first libraries in the United States, the Harvard College library established in 1638 and Ben Franklin’s Philadelphia Library Company founded in 1732, did not welcome kids. By the nineteenth century, however, the idea that children should have access to libraries—at least to some libraries—took shape. In 1803, author, publisher, and bookseller Caleb Bingham donated 150 books for a children’s library in his hometown of Salisbury, Connecticut, and “apprentice libraries” for working young men were established in Philadelphia and Brooklyn in 1820 and 1823, respectively. The goal of these libraries was to help the patrons further their education, and, for the most part, library usage was limited to young men (the Brooklyn library did permit girls to use the library one afternoon a week). A few years later, the towns of Peterborough, New Hampshire, and West Cambridge, Massachusetts, opened children’s libraries. At the same time, various churches developed libraries for Sunday school students.

To attract poor children to participate, not only were the books lent out for free, but eventually secular material was included, too.  Mention “youth services” and “libraries” to anyone uninvolved in the information services world, and the listener, searching for a personal way to connect to the topic, will respond with a tale about bringing a toddler to the local library’s story hour, or how his ninth-grade daughter feels about the required, graded session in the school media center, or the value of summer reading programs, or a teenager’s wonder that her local library hosts game nights. “Youth services,” though it sounds like a cohesive set of programs, is characterized by a wide range of functions for a diverse clientele. As Christine Jenkins writes in her survey of research on youth services librarianship, “youth service librarianship—a term that encompasses all library services to youth (children and young adults, ages zero to eighteen) in school and public library settings—has long been considered the classic success story of American libraries.” Despite the dearth of research on long stretches of youth services’ history that Jenkins and other experts lament, certain events of significance and trends in serving young patrons emerge in the historical record.  Misgivings about allowing children into libraries continued through most of the 1800s even as services to youth were expanding.

A pivotal event cited in many histories of children’s services is the 1835 New York State legislation to fund libraries within each school district. But these libraries were intended for the use of adults, not the children who attended school. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the ambivalence to allowing children in libraries changed, and in short order children’s services were among the most important provided. In 1876, when it was common for libraries to be closed to children below high school age, the U.S. Bureau of Education produced the report “Public Libraries in the United States of America,” in which William Fletcher made the argument that age restrictions should be eliminated and special facilities for children provided in libraries throughout the country. At the very first ALA conference, Samuel S. Green gave a presentation that included a discussion of assisting young patrons, and three years later the conference theme was children’s literature.

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