AMMLA purpose and history

 

The American Merchant Marine Library Association (AMMLA) is a non-profit, non-sectarian organization providing a unique and necessary service to those who spend their lives at sea. Books offer diversion from daily routine and an opportunity to broaden educational horizons. American merchant seamen, the US Coast Guard and the Military Sealift Command ships, as well as those of the NOAA, appreciate the presence aboard ship of the "Public Library of the High Seas."

AMMLA is the only public library chartered to provide library service on American ships. Its history goes back to a World War I book program conducted by the American Library Association to supply books to soldiers and sailors. At the war's end the American Library Association asked Mrs. Henry Howard, Chief of the Social Service Bureau of the United States Shipping Board, to establish an association to continue placing libraries on American merchant ships. As a result of her efforts, the New York Board of Regents gave AMMLA its library charter in 1921.

 

Next Page