National Library Week on April, 2024: How come "city" libraries have to put the word PUBLIC in front of it? read more?

National Library Week 2024.

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You'd be surprised. Public libraries, as others have mentioned, are publicly funded. These libraries are open to everyone - anyone rich or poor can enter and use the resources inside (computers, books, newspapers, magazines, etc.) But there are libraries all over the place. Of course, colleges and universities have libraries. But also businesses, R & D labs, art museums, orchestras have music libraries, law firms have law libraries, even QVC has it's own library - but they aren't open to the public. These are called "special libraries" and they serve specific business needs for private organizations. You can see some examples for these unusual libraries in the Philadelphia area here:

Believe it or not, this is National Library Week, so it's a good time for your question.

About how many books does the average library actually have?

Most cities have several libraries and branches. Ours is the Pikes Peak Library District. Since I live in the Rocky Mountain boonies, I use the Bookmobile. It makes a stop just a few miles down the road. I can reserve books and check them out for 6 weeks at a time.

Here's all the info on PPLD plus their operating expenses:

The Library of Congress

"... is the de facto national library of the United States and the research arm of the United States Congress. Located in Washington, D.C., it is the largest by shelf space and one of the most important libraries in the world. Its collections include more than 30 million catalogued books and other print materials in 470 languages; more than 58 million manuscripts; the largest rare book collection in North America, including a Gutenberg Bible (one of only four perfect vellum copies known to exist); over 1 million US Government publications; 1 million issues of world newspapers spanning the past three centuries; 33,000 bound newspaper volumes; 500,000 microfilm reels; over 6,000 comic books[4] titles; the world's largest collection of legal materials; films; 4.8 million maps; sheet music; 2.7 million sound recordings; the Betts Stradivarius; and the Cassavetti Stradivarius. The head of the Library is the Librarian of Congress."