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The Library Company of Philadelphia (LCP) is a non-profit organization based in Philadelphia. Founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin as a library, the Library Company of Philadelphia has accumulated one of the most significant collections of historically valuable manuscripts and printed material in the United States. The current collection size is about 500,000 books and 70,000 other items, including 2,150 items that once belonged to Franklin, the Mayflower Compact, major collections of 17th century and Revolution-era pamphlets and ephemera, maps, and whole libraries assembled in the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection also includes first editions of ''Moby-Dick'' and ''Leaves of Grass''. ==Early history== The Library Company was an offshoot of the Junto, a discussion group in colonial Philadelphia, that gravitated around Benjamin Franklin. On July 1, 1731, Franklin and a number of his fellow members among the Junto drew up articles of agreement to found a library, for they had discovered that their far-ranging conversations on intellectual and political themes foundered at times on a point of fact that might be found in a decent library. In colonial Pennsylvania at the time there were not many books; Books from London booksellers were expensive to purchase and slow to arrive. Franklin and his friends were mostly of moderate means, and none alone could have afforded a representative library such as a gentleman of leisure might expect to assemble. By pooling their resources in pragmatic Franklinian fashion, as the Library Company's historian wrote, "the contribution of each created the book capital of all." The first librarian they hired was Louis Timothee, America's first. He only held the position for a brief time. Until another librarian was found to replace him, Benjamin Franklin took over his duties. Franklin's stint as librarian ended in 1734. He was replaced by William Parsons. He was the librarian for 12 years. Robert Greenway was the fourth librarian, and his tenure lasted until 1763.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.librarycompany.org/about/Instance.pdf )〕 The articles of association specified that each member after the first fifty must be approved by the directors, sign the articles, and pay the subscription. Admitting new members and selecting new books were the directors’ ordinary duties. In the back of the library's catalog from 1741, Franklin mentioned that the library was accessible to people who were not members. Those who were not members were allowed to borrow books. However they had leave enough money to cover the cost of the book. Apparently, their money was given back upon returning the book. The privilege of being a member meant that books could be borrowed for free.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.librarycompany.org/about/Instance.pdf )〕 On November 10, 1731, at Nicholas Scull's Bear Tavern ten persons paid their forty shillings: Robert Grace (share no. 1), Thomas Hopkinson (share no. 2),2 Benjamin Franklin (share no. 3), John Jones, Jr. (4), Joseph Breintnall (5), Anthony Nicholas (6), Thomas Godfrey (7), Joseph Stretch (8), Philip Syng, Jr. (9), and John Sober (10). It was a disappointing turnout: all but John Sober and the hatter Joseph Stretch (son of Peter Stretch), who later became a Pennsylvania assemblyman, were officers. The library now had eleven paid-up members. Joseph Stretch and his brothers provided half of the original capital to build Pennsylvania Hospital, another of Benjamin Franklin's projects. Over time, fifty subscribers invested 40 shillings each and promised to pay ten shillings a year thereafter to buy books and maintain a shareholder's library. Therefore, "the Mother of all American subscription libraries" was established, and a list of desired books compiled in part by James Logan, "the best Judge of Books in these parts," was sent to London and by autumn the first books were on the shelves. Earlier libraries in the Thirteen Colonies belonged to gentlemen, members of the clergy, and colleges. Members of the Library Company soon opened their own book presses to make donations: ''A Collection of Several Pieces'', by John Locke; ''Logic: or, the Art of Thinking'', by the Port Royalists Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, which Franklin in his autobiography said he had read at the age of 16; Plutarch's ''Moralia'' translated by Philemon Holland; Lewis Roberts' ''Merchants Mappe of Commerce'', and others. A bit later William Rawle added a set of Spenser's ''Works'' to the collection and Francis Richardson gave several volumes, among them Francis Bacon's ''Sylva Sylvarum'', but on the whole books in Latin were few. Overtures to the proprietor of Pennsylvania, John Penn at Pennsbury at first elicited no more than a polite response, but an unsolicited gift of 34 pound sterling arrived in the summer of 1738 from Walter Sydserfe, a Scottish-born physician and planter of Antigua. The earliest surviving printed catalogue of 1741 gives the range of readers' tastes, for the members' requirements shaped the collection. Excluding gifts, a third of the holdings of 375 titles were historical works, geographies and accounts of voyages and travels, a category the Library Company has collected energetically throughout its history. A fifth of the titles were literature, mostly in the form of poetry and plays, for the prose novel was still in its infancy: as late as 1783, in the first orders from London after the war years, the directors thought "we should not think it expedient to add to our present stock, anything in the novel way." Another fifth of the titles were devoted to works of science. Theology and sermons, however, accounted for only a tenth of the titles, which set the Free Library apart from collegiate libraries at Harvard and Yale. The Company's agent in London was Peter Collinson, Fellow of the Royal Society, the Quaker mercer-naturalist of London, who corresponded with John Bartram. The Library Company's example was soon imitated in other cities along the Atlantic coast, from Salem to Charleston. The Library soon became a repository of other curiosities: antique coins, including a gift of Roman coins from a Tory Member of Parliament, fossils, natural history specimens, minerals. When John Penn, making up for his slow start, sent an air-pump to the learned society in 1739, the directors, to house it commissioned a glazed cabinet, the earliest extant example of American-made Palladian architectural furniture. Rooms on the second floor of the newly finished west wing of the State House (now Independence Hall) housed the Library and its collections: there Franklin and his associates performed their first experiments in electricity during the 1740s. Later Benjamin West sent the mummified hand of an Egyptian princess. A charter was issued for the Company from the Penn proprietors, March 24, 1742, that included a plot of land, issued in their name by Governor George Thomas. Collinson, who had faithfully executed the Company's requests for books over the years, sent windfalls in 1755 and in 1758 in the form of boxes of his own copies of a score of 17th-century accounts of the newly established British colonies in America, among them such classics as Strachey's ''Lawes'', Mourt's ''Relation'' and John Smith's ''Generall Historie of Virginia''. The Library Company's microscope and telescope were frequently borrowed. In 1769 Owen Biddle used the telescope to observe the transit of Venus from Cape Henlopen. On May 9 of that year Sarah Wistar became the first woman to be voted a library share. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Library Company of Philadelphia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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