To the Kingdom of Fife!!! We travel by coach to Dunfermline, birthplace of Andrew Carnegie, to see the first
Carnegie library. Like the Edinburgh Central Library, this building is made of stone, unlike many in the UK which are brick. This is the first library created from the donation of about 8000 pounds from Andrew Carnegie, and obviously not his last. Although Carnegie donated the original money to raise a building and to fill its shelves, it was left to the town to continue its upkeep. The demand was so great for a public lending library that on its first day, the library ran out of books to lend. Their archive and special collections had its own climate controlled space. This was the first true climate controlled space in a library we had seen in the UK. Some of their special collections are on display in a dedicated gallery space which include:
Erskine Beveridge, George Reid, Murrison Burns, and Robert Henryson collections. It may have been the first Carnegie library, but to the locals this is the Dunfermline Public Library that Carnegie happened to give money for first.
No comments:
Post a Comment