Most institutions of similar character in this country 
charge admission at least on two or three days of the week, 
but the inscription over one of the entrances of Carnegie 
Institute—“Free to the People” —tells the story of the 
liberality of the donor, Andrew Carnegie. 
The Carnegie Institute building is unique in that it 
houses under one roof a library, a museum of natural history, 
a department of fine arts, and a music hall. The fact that all 
these divisions are in one building might indicate to some 
that they are not comprehensive in their respective fields. 
but this is not the case. Each department takes rank with 
any separate institution of like character in the country. 
The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is the largest Car- 
negie library in the world. It is a free public circulating and 
reference library, open to all people. For more than thirty 
years it has been serving Pittsburgh, and in that compara- 
tively short time, it has grown from one main library with 
a staff of 16 people, a permanent collection of 16,000 books, 
and an annual circulation of 113,835 books, to a system of 
10 iibraries, 2 sub-branch libraries, 18 adult deposit stations 
(such as at telephone exchanges, department store employes’ 
rest rooms, etc.); 14 high school libraries, 70 libraries in 
platoon schools, 8 school deposit stations (from which the 
community as well as school children draw books), and 12 
schools, having 50 classroom collections. 
The staff now includes 290 people, and 2,304,912 books 
were sent during 1927 into the homes of Pittsburgh. This is 
twenty times the circulation of the first year. During the 
last ten years the number of books lent for home use has 
increased 85 per cent. 
Who uses these books? Are they read mostly by children? 
In 1927, the books read were almost equally divided between 
juvenile and adult. This means that on the whole, children 
and their elders run an almost even pace in reading. Did 
they read stories and novels largely? Only 57 per cent of the 
books lent were fiction. This means that 985,549 books of a 
more serious nature were borrowed for home reading in ad- 
dition to about 600,000 volumes used in the Central Library 
for study and research. The library has become a large factor 
in carrying on the educational work of Pittsburgh.