India, Aug. 12 -- Long before the rest of India had even begun to imagine a modern public library system, the princely state of Baroda (now Vadodara) was already in the middle of a quiet revolution. In the early 1900s, a sprawling network of public libraries was taking shape, serving not just the urban elite, but farmers, schoolchildren, and villagers across the state. At the heart of this ambitious experiment in reading and education was an American missionary, cataloguer, and bibliophile: William Alanson Borden.

"Borden's work in Baroda was decades ahead of its time," says Chirag Munjani, who has been running the Vadodara Heritage Walk for the last 12 years. "He didn't just bring books; he brought an entire philosophy of what libraries...