Building the Bürgerbibliothek: donating to the Zurich citizens’ library in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

This paper uses the donors’ register of the Zurich Bürgerbibliothek (‘citizens’ library’) to explore how the collection of the city’s first public library developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The donors’ register records over 3,000 gifts from some 900 local and foreign benefactors between 1629, the year of the library’s founding, and 1769. Unlike a standard library or auction catalogue, the donors’ register allows us to observe engagement with the Bürgerbibliothek over time and reveals that, while a remarkable influx of patrons in the first decade of the library’s existence secured its position in the cultural and intellectual fabric of Zurich society, international interest in the institution dropped significantly by the end of the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, the Bürgerbibliothek’s consistent growth across the period attests to the popularity of the library and its accessible collection at a local level as well as its benefactors’ belief in the reciprocal value of patronising this new type of civic institution.