Brooklyn Public Library
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Brooklyn Central Library
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| Established | 1896 |
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| Location | Brooklyn, New York City, NY |
| Coordinates | 40°40′20″N 73°58′05″W / 40.672359°N 73.968146°WCoordinates: 40°40′20″N 73°58′05″W / 40.672359°N 73.968146°W |
| Branches | 60 |
| Collection | |
| Size | 5,045,500 items |
| Access and use | |
| Population served | 2,565,635 |
| Other information | |
| Director | Linda E. Johnson (2011-present) |
| Website | www |
The Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) is the public library system of the borough of Brooklyn, in New York City. It is the fifth largest public library system in the United States. Like the two other public library systems in New York City, it is an independent nonprofit organization that is funded by the New York City and State governments, the federal government, and private donors. In Fiscal Year 2009, Brooklyn Public Library had the highest program attendance of any public library system in the United States. The library currently promotes itself as Bklyn Public Library.
In 1852, several prominent citizens established the "Brooklyn Athenaeum and Reading Room" for the instruction of young men. It was as was the practice in those times, a private, subscription library for members, who were recruited and encouraged by the up-rising mercantile and business class of young men, to continue by constant reading whatever formal education they had received through a university, college, high school/private academy, or trade school. Its collections focused on the liberal arts and the humanities such as biography, economics, history, literature, philosophy, and other applications later labeled social studies.
Five years later, in 1857, another group of young men, along with businessmen, manufacturers, and merchants, founded the "Brooklyn Mercantile Library Association of the City of Brooklyn", with holdings more pronounced in the business, commercial, economics, mathematical, scientific, and technical fields. The Librarian-in-Charge was Stephen Buttrick Noyes, who later went to the Library of Congress in 1866 but returned to Brooklyn three years later, in 1869. He later commenced developing the extensive catalog for the collections which he completed in 1888. The two collections were merged in 1869 and later moved to a headquarters building on Montague Street. In 1878, the Library Associations were renamed the "Brooklyn Public Library".
The first free public library in Brooklyn was that of Pratt Institute, a collegiate institute founded by Charles Pratt in 1888. Available not only for its own students and faculty, the library was also open to the general public at that early time.
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