The Sunset Volume 13, PT. 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ...with a total number of volumes exceeding forty millions and a year's home circulation of forty-eight millions. An equally great advance has been made in the methods of distributing these volumes. Books have become literally as free as air. In some localities good books are now freer than good air. What with branch libraries, delivery stations, traveling and home libraries, the meanest hovel now finds free books coming to its very door. The story of the San Francisco public library's growth to a place with the most active libraries of the large eastern cities is the story of the growth of the public library idea in the United States. Despite the drawback of its position, isolated from the center of inspiration, this library is well abreast of the most enlightened eastern methods. In fact, it is pursuing a policy today to which some of our friends over the mountains have not yet attained. Ranking ninth in size among American cities, San Francisco's public library circulated only 50,000 less books last year than did that of St. Louis, the fourth city in size, and actually more than Baltimore, the sixth. The American public library dates an era from the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, where met the first national convention of librarians, resulting in the American Library Association. That year, also, the government published a bulky and exhaustive volume, "Public Libraries in the United States." The sparks struck out by these events kindled enthusiasm in many parts of the land, among others in San Francisco, where from the earliest days lived many who were not out of touch with the larger life; as witness the establishment of the mercantile library, still in existence, when the city was scarce three years old. Among those who...