Editing Seattle Public Library (section)

===Late 19th century: founding===
Seattle's first attempt to start a library association occurred at a meeting of 50 residents  on July 30, 1868, but produced only minimal success over the next two decades.<ref name="SPL-hist">{{cite web |title=The Seattle Public Library: History |website=spl.org |date=2006-02-23 |url=https://www.spl.org/default.asp?pageID=about_history_history |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20060518143623/http://www.spl.org/default.asp?pageID=about_history_history |archive-date=2006-05-18 |url-status=dead}}</ref> The Ladies' Library Association began a more focused attempt to put together a public library in 1888. They had raised some funds and had even obtained a pledge of land from [[Henry Yesler]], but their efforts were cut short by the [[Great Seattle Fire]] of 1889. Nonetheless, encouraged by their ideas, the revised October 1890 [[city charter]] formally established the Public Library as a branch of the city government. The ladies' influence can be seen in that the charter required that at least two of the five library commissioners be women. The library was funded by a 10% share of city fines, penalties, and licenses.<ref>{{harvnb |Seattle Public Library annual report |1915 |pp=6–7}}</ref>

The first library opened April 8, 1891 as a reading room on the third floor of the Occidental Block—later the [[Seattle Hotel]]—supervised by librarian A. J. Snoke. By December 1891 when books were first allowed to be borrowed, it had 6,541 volumes. Snoke was succeeded in 1893 by John D. Atkinson, who was succeeded in 1895 by Charles Wesley Smith, who remained in the position until 1907. Smith took over a library that, like all of Seattle, had been seriously impacted by the [[Panic of 1893]]: by 1895 its annual budget was only half of what it had been that first year.<ref name=SPL-1915-7>{{harvnb |Seattle Public Library annual report |1915 |p=7}}</ref>

In its first decade or so, the growing library "developed the traveling habit".<ref name=SPL-1915-7 /> In June 1894, it moved across Second Avenue to the Collins Block. By 1895, the budget situation was so dire that Smith initially experimented with charging borrowers ten cents to borrow a book; the experiment was a failure and in 1896 the library moved to the Rialto, a building farther north on Second Avenue, far enough north that at that time it stood outside of Seattle's core. As the city grew out, that building was later occupied by the [[Frederick and Nelson]] department store. At the Rialto, the library for the first time moved to an open-stacks policy, where users could browse through the shelves for themselves instead of presenting a request to a librarian.<ref name=SPL-1915-7 /> In 1898 the library moved again to the former Yesler Mansion, a forty-room building on the site that would later become the [[King County Courthouse]].<ref name=SPL-1915-8>{{harvnb |Seattle Public Library annual report |1915 |p=8}}</ref>

Meanwhile, in 1896, the library established a [[bookbinding|bindery]], and a new city charter drastically decreased the power of the library commission and removed the requirement of its having female members. This greatly increased Smith's power, a change which he himself opposed; in 1902 a new Library Board would be established, again gaining supervisory rather than merely advisory power.<ref name=SPL-1915-7 />