We, the reading public, walk up the solid and familiar granite steps of the Bangor Public Library and push open the great oak doors. The contents on the shelves in the library’s spacious oak-trimmed rooms are ours to borrow, consult or browse. For free. And the “giveaway” doesn’t stop there. Internet access, programs for fun and literacy, for health and education, for artists and poets and crafters, for children, youth and adults, art exhibits and musical events – all are free at the library.

“People from all over the country come here,” said Barbara McDade, library director since 1991 and only the seventh since 1883. Often, she said, those library visitors from away are family historians who come to Bangor specifically to use the vast historical and genealogical materials in the library’s Bangor Room, which seems to beckon the thoughtful and creates an atmosphere conducive to courting the ghosts of the past.

Years before McDade came to Bangor, when she lived in Virginia and New Jersey, she knew about Bangor Public Library through her work as a research librarian for physicists. “[Bangor Public Library] was one of the few places where scientists could borrow [through the interlibrary loan system] pre-1900s, pre-Einstein, physics books [for use in scholarly research],” she said.

It will take $2.5 million this year to provide such “free” services to those who patronize Bangor Public Library at 145 Harlow St.

In addition to the art shows and musical events, the library offers without cost to the public each year, art treasures such as paintings, photographs and sculptures by some of the area’s and Maine’s best artists.

Some of the “free” services the library provides reach far into the community and beyond.

Robert Woodward of Bangor was director of Bangor Public Library, its sixth, from 1962 to 1990. It was during the early part of his tenure in the 1960s that trustees dipped into the library’s considerable endowment resources that only could be used for the purchase of books. At that time, the library filled the shelves of Bangor’s six elementary school libraries with $250,000 worth of books and periodicals.

“There was a drive all over the country at that time to establish school libraries. It was a countrywide commitment,” Woodward said. “Bangor Public Library was in a very strong position because of its endowments. It was a very natural thing to do.”

The library, he said, had had an ongoing commitment since the 1920s to support city school programs with books, which were loaded into boxes and carried into the schools. “Not many communities,” he said, “were fortunate enough to have that shared effort between schools and libraries.”

Woodward also was among those who pioneered in Maine another national library movement, the interlibrary loan system.

“No library is complete and resourceful by itself,” he said. “Its strength comes from cooperative effort” like interlibrary loan. “More than half the people in Maine lived in towns with no, or inadequate, libraries,” he said. “Interlibrary loan opened up the resources of strong libraries [like Bangor Public Library] to the weaker ones.

“Interlibrary loan goes back to the 1920s when the Bangor Public Library began the practice of reaching out,” Woodward explained. “Even 60 years ago [before there was a state-legislated interlibrary loan system in place] Bangor Public Library at its own expense was involved in interlibrary loan.”

The Bangor Public Library began in 1828 with seven books in a footlocker. Until 1905, one paid a fee to be a member of the library, borrow its books and use its materials. In 1883, a library card cost $1 per person per year – a lot of money then. The card entitled the holder to borrow one book at a time.

By the end of the 19th century, Pennsylvania millionaire and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie was spending $56 million of his personal fortune to establish 1,681 public libraries in the United States. At the same time, the free library movement was making its influence felt throughout the United States, including Bangor.

One of the reasons Bangor Public Library became a free library was “so children [would have greater access to] the library,” said McDade.

The origin of the free library movement was rooted in the Enlightenment idea that everyone possesses the right to knowledge. Reading was seen as a vehicle for acquiring knowledge and for self-improvement. Libraries were, and continue to be, seen as places for the betterment and improvement of all.

But library services carry a cost, even when it’s not evident to those who use the library.

“Running a library is not free,” McDade pointed out. Staff must be paid, books purchased, the building kept clean and repaired, computer equipment upgraded, and heating and electrical bills paid.

Some of the money to support the cost of running a library comes from library endowment funds earmarked only for the purchase of books – legally defined as “something that is printed.”

“We could use more endowments for recorded books,” McDade commented.

City, state and federal tax money also support the cost of running a “free” library, which, most will agree, is money well spent.

“We aren’t just the mother of all libraries,” Woodward said of Bangor Public Library and its 100-year history of free service. “We’re also the recipient of services from other libraries [via interlibrary loan]. It’s a great institution to be connected with. It’s a cultural gem.”

To learn more about the history of Bangor Public Library, read “Seven Books in Footlocker: A Commemorative History of the Bangor Public Library.” For information, call 947-8336. The library is accessible to the handicapped.