Arthur Lambert (d1924), William Madgen (1850-1930) and Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) were entrepreneurial social improvers involved in the creation of new public libraries. More recently salvage dealers such as Retrouvius have been involved in their salvage and reuse.
 
Arthur Wren Lambert, a Croydon mechanical engineer and inventor of Addiscombe Road and Cherry Orchard Road, had a lifelong interest in books and libraries. His inventions included card trays, paperclips, sheaf catalogues, newspaper rods, and directory holders.
 
Before the 1880s libraries were essentially book stores with a front counter or office beyond which the public were not admitted. Books were ordered and retrieved from librarians. Andrew Carnegie, a fabulously rich philanthropic Scottish American industrialist who believed in education for all, built 3,000 public libraries and encouraged managers to allow access to open stacks of shelves containing the books. Lambert teamed up with W Lucy & Co, an iron and steel fabricator in Oxford to manufacture the 'Perfect Adjustable Shelving' system with cast iron standards, steel ledgers or shelves, and steel rod bracing, with a wooden top shelf. Metal book shelves were also deemed better than wood because they allowed more air circulation, lower humidity and reduced risks of insect infestations and moulds in paper.
 
Worcester public library in 1881 was the first to have Lambert's patent shelving fitted. At the time, the managing director of W Lucy & Co was William Leonard Madgen who incorporated and expanded the company. Madgen was also a social reformer whose writings on 'industrial redistribution' influenced Ebenezer Howard and the garden city movement (see Garden Cities of Tomorrow).
 
In 1907 Carnegie opened the Townhead library in Glasgow where he delivered an address to the annual conference of the Library Association commenting on the role of the librarian to 'solace, refine and elevate the community'. Carnegie paid for libraries in the USA, UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, Serbia, Africa, Caribbean and Oceania.
 
Lambert knew libraries inside out and when he died in 1924 he was apparently 'much lamented by the library community'.
 
In 1993, Adam Hills and Maria Speake, two architectural students at the Mackintosh School of Art started Retrouvius in Glasgow. In 1998 Carnegie's Townhead library was demolished and Retrouvius rescued two carved stone figures of Knowledge and Learning and their aedicular stone surrounds - which were advertised on Salvo, featured in the New York Times and were eventually sold at Sotheby's.
 
Several year's ago Retrouvius had moved to London, continuing to salvage and design, was involved in the removal of shelving from an old government department which turned out to be the Lambert's patent made by W Lucy & Co. These sold to various private clients as well as fashion shops and the like.
 
And this month Retrouvius, which has now acquired more Lambert shelving from a Cambridge library, is offering it for sale on its latest newsletter.