ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 covers the General Library of the Institute of Jamaica from 1879 to 1962. It examines the library’s place in the lives of its subscribers and its role as a vetting tool used by the ‘select people’ in determining the clubbability of the indigenous elite. This chapter assesses the impact of three major changes – the Carnegie Grants of 1936, the Manchester Free Library of 1938 and the Bateson Plan of 1945 – which called into question the subscription library’s effectiveness as an island-wide library service. It concludes with the gradual transformation of the library at the start of 1945 from a nineteenth-century subscription library into a twentieth-century government depository by 1962.
