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This article looks at the library borrowing records of Kidderminster Municipal Library at a time of economic decline in the main industry of the town -carpet weaving. It illustrates the limitations of the early libraries following the 1850 Public Libraries Act through a local study. It examines how the borrowing records recorded in a surviving issue book reflect trends in the popularity of reading materials and, in particular, growing interest in migration to London and emigration abroad.keywords free library, public libraries, reading, emigration, donations to libraries, Napoleonic wars, nineteenth-century working-class reading practices As one of the first libraries to be opened under the 1850 Public Libraries Act, the surviving records from Kidderminster Municipal Library provide a valuable source for investigating both the provision of texts via donated stock and the uses to which such resources were put in an early library. 1 Peter Hoare and Alistair Black's work on the history of public libraries in Britain points to the use of such sources in their historical context as a way forward in the study of libraries and information history. 2 Drawing on such guidance, this paper provides an indication of the limitations of the early libraries through a local study. The records of Kidderminster Municipal Library, which was reference-only until a lending library was established in 1881, reflect the fact that most of the early libraries suffered from an inadequacy of funds, despite the partial provision made for book purchase in the 1855 amendment to the Act. By 1896, only 334 districts in England and Wales had levied the library rate and, like Kidderminster itself, many of these districts were relatively small. These records allow us to examine the aims of the proponents of the Library and the hopes of the users alongside each other.Alistair Black observed that 'Free libraries were proposed as educators in economic practicalities', although their utilitarian aims were not 'pursued in isolation from its cultural concerns'. 3 Yet not all could live up to their aims. Philip Corrigan and Val

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