The New York Public Library is pretty clearly great library. From Wikipedia: “With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress) and the third largest in the world (behind the British Library).” In 2017 their annual budget was $302,208,000 and their endowment is $1,448,838,000.

So, they are pretty impressive.

Look around your own library. See all the work you do for kids? That good work didn’t just happen in libraries – a lot of it started at the NYPL!

In different formats we have talked about the history of public libraries in the US. An extremely condensed (so definitely not a full picture) version can be summed up this way:

• Libraries in the West were started by women to have the chance to educate their kids and talk to other adults.
• Libraries in the East were started by women who wanted to educate people, to make them part of the community, and to improve them.

So those libraries on the Eastern coast were designed to provide all the “good” books they believed adults would want. Not really for kids, because kids weren’t really important. And a lot of kids, poor kids at least, were busy working. (There is a horrifying discussion to be had branching off this point, to the terrible work conditions kids were enduring at this time. We’ll save it for another day; but if your own five year old hasn’t lost a finger in a loom factory accident, take a moment to thank worker safety/child labor laws!)

So, back to the NYPL.

A librarian there helped to revolutionize library service for kids: Anne Carroll Moore. She did a lot of work to make library services accessible to kids, especially poor kids who did not otherwise have access to books, nature, and storytime.

But absolute power does end up corrupting people, absolutely. And Moore amassed a little too much power over children’s books, not just in her library.

Get the whole story from this week’s 99% Invisible podcast, episode Goodnight Nobody, right here. You can read their show notes, or just listen to the episode! (The host, Roman Mars, has a lovely podcast voice; which will help you get into just the right frame of mind to hear stories about stories in the library!)

Enjoy this story – and vow to do a better job with your library and the books you are collecting!