The State Library was established by an act of February 11, 1825. The first official word touching such a library is to be found in the Journal of the first constitutional convention, where, under date of June 28, 1816, it is "Resolved, That it be recommended to the General Assembly of the State of Indiana, to appropriate the money voluntarily given by the citizens of Harrison County to the State, to the purchase of books for a library for the use of the Legislature and other officers of government; and that the said General Assembly will, from time to time, make such other appropriations for the increase of said library as they may deem necessary." After a lapse of nine years the proposed library materialized, largely through the efforts of Judge Benjamin Parke, to whom is given the credit of being one of our earliest and most ardent promoters of all matters pertaining to education. Its original purpose, as specified in the Journal, was to serve the various officers of Indiana, and it included what afterward became the Supreme Court Library. The humbleness of its beginning is indicated by the fact that for sixteen years it did not even have a separate librarian, but was in the hands of the Secretary of State, who received the munificent sum of $15 per year extra for taking care of it, and the annual appropriation up to 1831 was but $30. For a good many years the State Library was something of a joke, and the librarianship one of the minor political plums, but its scope gradually broadened until it has become a large and valuable reference library for the use of all citizens.