Fundraising in American Public Libraries: An Overview

Abstract

America’s public libraries have faced changes because of technology’s challenges—but a disruption that’s just as dangerous is the gradual dwindling of the public funding that they have historically relied on. To meet the formidable challenges, librarians will have to go back to their historical “roots.” So-called “public” libraries, after all, were actually founded by large bequests from private donors such as Andrew Carnegie and Samuel Tilden. Modern-day librarians—from Virginia to Montana—that have embraced the crucial work of fundraising have been able to devise imaginative, sometimes Internet-based, solutions to overcoming budget shortfalls. Their stories show us what is possible when an inventive entrepreneurial spirit pervades the library.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.