New Bedford, Massachusetts; its history, industries, institutions and attractions (1889) (14591119967)

Identifier: newbedfordmassac00newb (find matches)
Title: New Bedford, Massachusetts; its history, industries, institutions and attractions
Year: 1889 (1880s)
Authors: New Bedford Board of Trade Pease, Zeph. W. (Zephaniah Walter), b. 1861 Hough, George A Sayer, William L. (William Lawton), 1848-1914
Subjects: New Bedford (Mass.)
Publisher: (New Bedford) Mercury publishing company, printers
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN



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e Encyclopedia Britannica, through the field ofdictionaries, gazetteers, and directories, to the United States Dispen-satory and the Tribune Almanac. All these books, newspapers, andmagazines are accessible to the public, without the intervention ofthe librarian or any assistant, and it speaks well for the appreciationin which the library is held that the privilege is rarely abused.During the thirty-six years that the library has been open, twoperiodicals have been mutilated and a few pencil-marked. Nonehave been lost. Robert C. Ingraham was the first librarian and has ofiiciatedin that capacity to the present time, a period of thirty-six years.Much of the success of the library is due to his zeal and intelligence.The library has grown under his care to be one of the best free pub-lic libraries in the country. He knows it thoroughly and his vast storeof information concerning its contents is freely placed at the disposalof the seeker for knowledge or recreation among its volumes. Four
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SEEING THE SIGHTS. 83 assistants are required to do the work of the library. In the year1887, the-latest for which statistics are available, forty-two thousandsix hundred fifty-seven volumes were taken out; this was a decreasefrom the number of deliveries of the preceding year, and it isaccounted for by the facts that for some months the library was closedfor repairs and alterations and that the delivery of works of fictionwas suspended for the purpose of preparing and printing a new cat-alogue. A number of trust funds have been established for the benefitof the library. The first was that of George Rowland, Jr., its amount,$1600, being the amount of his salary as mayor for two years. Thesecond constitutes the Charles W. Morgan fund and its amount is$1000. Then there is the Oliver Crocker fund of $1000, the JamesB. Congdon fund of $500, and the George O. Crocker fund of$10,000. The chief dependence of the trustees, however, for additionsto the library, is the bequest of Sylvia Ann Row