Editing Carnegie library (section)

{{Short description|Libraries donated by Andrew Carnegie}}
{{Other uses|Carnegie Library (disambiguation)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2019}}

[[Image:Andrew Carnegie in National Portrait Gallery IMG 4441.JPG|upright|thumb|''Andrew Carnegie'', {{circa|1905}}, [[National Portrait Gallery (United States)|National Portrait Gallery]]]]
[[File:Carnegie plaque at Taunton Public Library.jpg|thumb|upright=.75|right|Plaque at the [[Taunton Public Library]] in Massachusetts]]
A '''Carnegie library''' is a [[library]] built with money donated by Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist [[Andrew Carnegie]]. A total of 2,509 Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929, including some belonging to [[Public library|public]] and [[university library]] systems. [[List of Carnegie libraries in the United States|1,689]] were built in the United States, [[List of Carnegie libraries in Europe|660]] in the United Kingdom and Ireland, [[List of Carnegie libraries in Canada|125]] in Canada, and 25 [[List of Carnegie libraries in Africa, the Caribbean, and Oceania|others]] in [[Australia]], [[South Africa]], [[New Zealand]], Serbia, Belgium, France, the Caribbean, Mauritius, Malaysia, and Fiji.

At first, Carnegie libraries were almost exclusively in places with which he had a personal connection—namely his birthplace in Scotland and the [[Pittsburgh]], [[Pennsylvania]] area, his adopted hometown. Yet, beginning in the middle of 1899, Carnegie substantially increased funding to libraries outside these areas. As Carnegie's library funding progressed, very few of the towns that requested a grant, committing to his terms for operation and maintenance, were refused. By the time the last grant was made, there were 3,500 libraries in the United States, nearly half of them Carnegie libraries.