Coordinates: 40°01′54″N 75°08′43″W / 40.03169°N 75.14528°W / 40.03169; -75.14528
| Free Library of Philadelphia | |
|---|---|
| Established | 1891 |
| Location | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Branches | 54 |
| Collection | |
| Items collected | Edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music Print and Picture Collection (largest in the U.S.A) |
| Size | 4,240,304 |
| Access and use | |
| Population served | 1,526,006 |
| Other information | |
| Budget | $45,043,901 |
| Director | Siobhan A. Reardon |
| Website | http://www.freelibrary.org/ |
The Free Library of Philadelphia is the public library system serving Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The library is the tenth largest public library system in the United States. The governance of the library is unique among public libraries in the United States, as it is neither a city agency or nonprofit organization. The library is governed by both an independent city agency managed by its own board of directors and a separate nonprofit organization, The Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation. The library was visited 6.1 million times in Fiscal Year 2011.
Read more about Free Library Of Philadelphia: Services, Special Collections, Branches
Famous quotes containing the words free, library and/or philadelphia:
“Our Luke shall leave us, Isabel; the land
Shall not go from us, and it shall be free;
He shall possess it, free as is the wind
That passes over it.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library. Venerable and calm, with all its treasures safe locked within its breast, it sleeps complacently and will, so far as I am concerned, so sleep forever. Never will I wake these echoes, never will I ask for that hospitality again ...”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“It used to be said that, socially speaking, Philadelphia asked who a person is, New York how much is he worth, and Boston what does he know. Nationally it has now become generally recognized that Boston Society has long cared even more than Philadelphia about the first point and has refined the asking of who a person is to the point of demanding to know who he was. Philadelphia asks about a man’s parents; Boston wants to know about his grandparents.”
—Cleveland Amory (b. 1917)