While Carlisle’s earliest library was by subscription and formed in 1787, it was in 1870, when the Reverend Moses Patten became the minister of the Union Calvinistic Society and his wife, Mrs. Lydia S. Patten, began gathering books and soliciting subscriptions, that a free library was created. Formalized in 1872 as the Carlisle Free Public Library, the Town appropriated funds and appointed a Library Committee. At that time, the library was housed in Union Hall and later in various private residences in town.

In 1894, Carlisle received the “sum of six thousand dollars with which to erect a brick building for a free public library” from Mrs. Joanna Gleason, a resident of Sudbury who had grown up in Carlisle. The land on Bedford Road was purchased for the library from Mr. Nathaniel Hutchinson for five hundred dollars. Designed by George G. Adams of Lawrence and built by D. W. Fitch of Billerica, the Gleason Public Library was dedicated on May 13, 1896.

An addition was built on the west side of the Gleason Library in 1973. An expanded and completely renovated Gleason Public Library was opened to the residents of Carlisle in September 2000, ready to serve the needs of a growing community entering the twenty-first century.