Volunteering can be traced back to medieval Britain where churches aided the poor and sick. In 1865 William Booth and his wife Catherine began the Salvation Army in London. Their daughter Eva Cory Booth established the organization in the United States and supervised the volunteer “Doughnut Girls” during World War l. Benjamin Franklin started the first volunteer firehouse in Philadelphia in 1736, and the American Red Cross was founded by Clara Barton in 1881.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2021 almost 61 million Americans volunteered through organizations providing $123 billion in economic value.
Library volunteers have played an important role thanks in large part to Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) who funded the construction of 2,509 libraries worldwide between 1883 and 1929 including 1,795 in the United States, of which 1,687 were public libraries and 108 were academic. About 800 are still used as libraries. Twenty-four Carnegie public libraries were built in Georgia between 1898 and 1914.
Volunteer Friends of the Library
Libraries need community support. One requirement for a Carnegie grant was a commitment by a community to raise additional funds to support library programs.
The first library Friends group in the United States, was founded in 1922 in Illinois. The first university Friends group in the US was formed at Harvard in 1925.
Alpharetta Branch Library
In February 1965 the leadership of the Alpharetta Women’s Club met with the leaders of the Alpharetta Jaycees, Alpharetta Lions Club and President of the Sandy Springs Library Board to discuss the creation of an Alpharetta library. They realized the importance of having clubs, businesses, churches and private citizens working together with the Fulton Country Government to create a branch library. Up to that time Alpharetta was serviced by a station wagon bookmobile…
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