"For book lovers, there's nothing like thumbing through a book once held by Benjamin Franklin. Or studying the debate a reader had with author James Thomson Callender - in beautiful script, on page after page - in The History of the United States for 1796; Including a Variety of Interesting Particulars Relative to the Federal Government Previous to That Period.

Those are among the delights found at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the country's oldest cultural institution and its first lending library."

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