CORPORATE LENDING LIBRARIES OPEN TO SUBSCRIBERS.

Tables 107 and 108.1

Closely connected with the foregoing group, but characterized by a greater freedom in conditions for the use of their contents, are subscription libraries owned by corporations. These indeed are the oldest kind of libraries for public use in this country, and they still outnumber those in any other group, though they do not equal the public lending, or public reference groups in the number of their volumes.

The libraries in this group are liable at any moment to become free lending libraries; a generous citizen may endow one of these on condition that its books shall be lent without charge, or the municipality may make a grant of public moneys upon the same condition.

The losses thus incurred are made up by the continual establishment of new libraries in new or growing centres of population. Very often the new enterprise results from the gift of some resident who gives books or money to buy books, as a beginning.

TABLE 107.-Summary by States and geographical divisions of lending libraries owned by corporations.

TABLE 103.-Detailed statistics of lending libraries owned by corporations and open to subscribers, mainly for the year 1836-87—Continued. [NOTE-Items respecting libraries marked with an

asterisk are taken from a previous Report.]