In his address at the opening Â鶹¾«Ñ¡’s first Reference Library in 1865, George Dawson declared that the Corporation’s role was to make provision ‘for all our people’. Through the dual lens Â鶹¾«Ñ¡’s municipal government and the sometimes strident articulation of civic pride, the proposed research intends to investigate the genesis of the public library movement in Birmingham: its governance, use and users and the movement’s impact on the educational and cultural life Â鶹¾«Ñ¡ in the latter decades of the nineteenth century.