Read about Alden Spooner and other proprietors of nineteenth-century Brooklyn circulating libraries in an article which appeared in the the November 2006 issue of the journal Library History.

My article, “Yet More American Circulating Libraries: A Preliminary Checklist of Brooklyn (New York) Circulating Libraries” [pdf], builds on David Kaser’s A Book for a Sixpence: The Circulating Library in America, which documents the development and existence of circulating libraries in America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Drawing on a variety of primary sources, including library catalogs and local newspapers and directories, I have compiled a checklist of thirty-three circulating libraries in Brooklyn, in existence between 1809 and 1896, a list accompanied by commentary based on primary evidence.

Check out my two related projects:
Two Views of Front Street, Near Fulton Ferry, Brooklyn, NY, 1820 and 2006
American Circulating Libraries Not in Kaser