What is the Trust’s connection with the Carnegie Libraries?
The Trust was set up to take forward the work that Andrew Carnegie had already begun, to pay for the setting up of Libraries. The first Carnegie library – in Dunfermline – was opened in 1883; with a further 295 libraries (often badged as Free Public Libraries) established across the UK and Ireland up to 1913 when the Carnegie UK Trust was founded. By the mid 1950s, when the programme came to an end, there were 660 Carnegie libraries paid for by Andrew Carnegie directly or by the Carnegie UK Trust and handed over to their local communities.
