ABSTRACT
Fundraising and development are activities new to the academic library scene, although as this entry illustrates, certain kinds of charitable giving have existed in universities and public institutions for many decades, if not centuries. Although some of the largest private universities in the United States have endowments that date back two or more centuries, few institutions of higher education have been involved in fund-raising in a serious manner for more that two or three decades. The great fortunes made in the Industrial Revolution enabled the establishment of a culture of philanthropy toward social institutions unknown elsewhere, or at any other time. With the attention of Andrew Carnegie, libraries became the focus of giving for a segment of America's wealthy, although for a number of decades this giving remained relatively restricted to public libraries.
