History of libraries

Tablet from the Library of Ashurbanipal containing part of the Epic of Gilgamesh

The first libraries consisted of archives of the earliest form of writing – the clay tablets in cuneiform script discovered in temple rooms in Sumer,[1][2] some dating back to 2600 BC.[3] About an inch thick, tablets came in various shapes and sizes. Mud-like clay was placed in the wooden frames, and the surface was smoothed for writing and allowed to dry until damp. After being inscribed, the clay dried in the sun, or for a harder finish, was baked in a kiln. For storage, tablets could be stacked on edge, side by side, the contents described by a title written on the edge that faced out and was readily seen. The first libraries appeared five thousand years ago in Southwest Asia's Fertile Crescent, an area that ran from Mesopotamia to the Nile in Africa. Known as the cradle of civilization, the Fertile Crescent was the birthplace of writing, sometime before 3000 BC. (Murray, Stuart A.P.) These archives, which mainly consisted of the records of commercial transactions or inventories, mark the end of prehistory and the start of history.[4][5]

Things were much the same in the government and temple records on papyrus of Ancient Egypt.[2] The earliest discovered private archives were kept at Ugarit; besides correspondence and inventories, texts of myths may have been standardized practice-texts for teaching new scribes. There is also evidence of libraries at Nippur about 1900 BC and those at Nineveh about 700 BC showing a library classification system.[6]

Over 30,000 clay tablets from the Library of Ashurbanipal have been discovered at Nineveh,[7] providing modern scholars with an amazing wealth of Mesopotamian literary, religious and administrative work. Among the findings were the Enuma Elish, also known as the Epic of Creation,[8] which depicts a traditional Babylonian view of creation, the Epic of Gilgamesh,[9] a large selection of "omen texts" including Enuma Anu Enlil which "contained omens dealing with the moon, its visibility, eclipses, and conjunction with planets and fixed stars, the sun, its corona, spots, and eclipses, the weather, namely lightning, thunder, and clouds, and the planets and their visibility, appearance, and stations",[10] and astronomic/astrological texts, as well as standard lists used by scribes and scholars such as word lists, bilingual vocabularies, lists of signs and synonyms, and lists of medical diagnoses.

The tablets were stored in a variety of containers such as wooden boxes, woven baskets of reeds, or clay shelves. The "libraries" were cataloged using colophons, which are a publisher's imprint on the spine of a book, or in this case a tablet. The colophons stated the series name, the title of the tablet, and any extra information the scribe needed to indicate. Eventually, the clay tablets were organized by subject and size. Unfortunately, due to limited bookshelf space, when more tablets were added to the library, older ones were removed, which is why some tablets are missing from the excavated cities in Mesopotamia.[11]

According to legend, mythical philosopher Laozi was keeper of books in the earliest library in China, which belonged to the Imperial Zhou dynasty.[12] Also, evidence of catalogues found in some destroyed ancient libraries illustrates the presence of librarians.[12]

Persia at the time of the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC) was home to some outstanding libraries. Those libraries within the kingdom had two major functions: the first came from the need to keep the records of administrative documents including transactions, governmental orders, and budget allocation within and between the Satrapies and the central ruling State.[13] The second function was to collect precious resources on different subjects of science and sets of principles e.g. medical science, astronomy, history, geometry and philosophy.

In 1933 an impressive collection of clay tablets discovered by the University of Chicago in Persepolis revealed the strong tendency of the Achaemenids to record, classify and store their documents as the backbone of their ruling system throughout a vast territory. The contents of these baked tablets written in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian vary from records of sales, taxes, payments, treasury details to remarkable social, artistic and philosophical aspects of ordinary life in the Empire.[14] These uniquely important tablets, known as the Persepolis Fortification Archive, are the property of Iran. A part of this impressive library archive is now kept in Iran and a great proportion of it is in the hands of the Chicago Oriental Institute as a long-term loan for the purpose of studying, analysing and translating.[15]

Some scholars during the early Islamic period declared that there were a number of large libraries in Iran before the conquest of Alexander III of Macedon. One of them is believed to be in an ancient city called Estakhr located near Persepolis. In the 10th century, Ibn al-Nadim, a well-known Muslim bibliographer, stated that following the conquest, the majority of the resources in different streams of science were taken from Persia's main libraries to Egypt. They were later translated into Latin, Egyptian, Coptic and Greek and used as a remarkable body of science in the Library of Alexandria. The rest is said to have been set on fire and burnt by Alexander militants.[16] Some evidence indicates that a sizeable building in Isfahan, Jey, named Sarouyeh, was used by Iran's ancient dynasties to store the enormous number of precious books and manuscripts. The primary purpose of such a monument was to protect the books from damages and hazards caused by natural disasters and wars.[16] At least three Islamic scholars, Al Biruni, Abu Maʿshar, and Hamza al-Isfahani, mentioned this hidden library in their works. They had been real observers of some of the revealed books coming out of the hidden library ruins. Observers claimed that most of the manuscripts were written on the bark of a tree called Touz or Khadang. It seems that some rare and valuable books from this treasury were baled and transferred to Baghdad for later reading and translating. As reported by observers, at the time of unearthing the Library, the alphabet used in the manuscripts was unknown to the ordinary people.[16][17][18]

Artistic rendering of the Library of Alexandria, based on some archaeological evidence

The Library of Alexandria, in Egypt, was the largest and most significant great library of the ancient world.[19] It flourished under the patronage of the Ptolemaic dynasty and functioned as a major center of scholarship from its construction in the 3rd century BC until the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC. The library was conceived and opened either during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter (323–283 BC) or during the reign of his son Ptolemy II (283–246 BC).[20] An early organization system was in effect at Alexandria.[20]

During Sassanid Empire collection of books drew the attention of rulers and priests. Priests intended to gather the spread and unknown Zoroastrianism manuscripts and rulers were keen on collection and promotion of science. Many Zoroastrian temples were accompanied by a library that was designed to collect and promote religious content.[21] One of the main outcomes of rulers’ interest in consolidating the science in the country was the establishment of Gundeshapur Scientific Centre being composed of a library, a hospital and an accompanying academy at the time of the King Shapur I. For the sake of enriching the existing Library resources, ambassadors were sent to widespread geographical regions e.g. China, Rome and India to inscribe the manuscripts, codices, and books; translated them to Pahlavi from diverse languages e.g. Sanskrit, Greek and Syriac and brought them to Academy of Gundishapur.[16]

The Library of Celsus in Ephesus, Anatolia, now part of Selçuk, Turkey was built in honor of the Roman Senator Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus[22][23] (completed in AD 135) by Celsus' son, Tiberius Julius Aquila Polemaeanus (consul, 110). The library was built to store 12,000 scrolls and to serve as a monumental tomb for Celsus. The library's ruins were hidden under debris of the city of Ephesus that was deserted in early Middle Ages. In 1903, Austrian excavations led to this hidden heap of rubble that had collapsed during an earthquake. The donator's son built the library to honor his father's memory and construction began around 113 or 114. Presently, visitors only see the remains of the library's facade.[24]

Private or personal libraries made up of written books (as opposed to the state or institutional records kept in archives) appeared in classical Greece in the 5th century BC. The celebrated book collectors of Hellenistic Antiquity were listed in the late 2nd century in Deipnosophistae. All these libraries were Greek; the cultivated Hellenized diners in Deipnosophistae pass over the libraries of Rome in silence. By the time of Augustus there were public libraries near the forums of Rome: there were libraries in the Porticus Octaviae near the Theatre of Marcellus, in the temple of Apollo Palatinus, and in the Ulpian Library in the Forum of Trajan. The state archives were kept in a structure on the slope between the Roman Forum and the Capitoline Hill.

Private libraries appeared during the late republic: Seneca inveighed against libraries fitted out for show by illiterate owners who scarcely read their titles in the course of a lifetime, but displayed the scrolls in bookcases (armaria) of citrus wood inlaid with ivory that ran right to the ceiling: "by now, like bathrooms and hot water, a library is got up as standard equipment for a fine house (domus).[25] Libraries were amenities suited to a villa, such as Cicero's at Tusculum, Maecenas's several villas, or Pliny the Younger's, all described in surviving letters. At the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, apparently the villa of Caesar's father-in-law, the Greek library has been partly preserved in volcanic ash; archaeologists speculate that a Latin library, kept separate from the Greek one, may await discovery at the site.

Remains of the Library of Celsus at Ephesus

In the West, the first public libraries were established under the Roman Empire as each succeeding emperor strove to open one or many which outshone that of his predecessor. Rome's first public library was established by Asinius Pollio. Pollio was a lieutenant of Julius Caesar and one of his most ardent supporters. After his military victory in Illyria, Pollio felt he had enough fame and fortune to create what Julius Caesar had sought for a long time: a public library to increase the prestige of Rome and rival the one in Alexandria.[26] Pollios's library, the Anla Libertatis,[27] which was housed in the Atrium Libertatis, was centrally located near the Forum Romanum. It was the first to employ an architectural design that separated works into Greek and Latin. All subsequent Roman public libraries will have this design.[28] At the conclusion of Rome's civil wars following the death of Marcus Antonius in 30 BC, the Emperor Augustus sought to reconstruct many of Rome's damaged buildings. During this construction, Augustus created two more public libraries. The first was the library of the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine, often called the Palatine library, and the second was the library of the Porticus Octaviae, although there is some debate that the Porticus library was actually built by Octavia.[29] Unfortunately, the library of the Porticus Octaviae would be later destroyed in the disastrous fire of Titus that broke out in AD 80.[30]

Two more libraries were added by the Emperor Tiberius on Palatine Hill and one by Vespasian after 70. Vespasian's library was constructed in the Forum of Vespasian, also known as the Forum of Peace, and became one of Rome's principal libraries. The Bibliotheca Pacis was built along the traditional model and had two large halls with rooms for Greek and Latin libraries containing the works of Galen and Lucius Aelius.[31] One of the best preserved was the ancient Ulpian Library built by the Emperor Trajan. Completed in 112/113 AD, the Ulpian Library was part of Trajan's Forum built on the Capitoline Hill. Trajan's Column separated the Greek and Latin rooms which faced each other.[32] The structure was approximately fifty feet high with the peak of the roof reaching almost seventy feet.[33]

Unlike the Greek libraries, readers had direct access to the scrolls, which were kept on shelves built into the walls of a large room. Reading or copying was normally done in the room itself. The surviving records give only a few instances of lending features. Most of the large Roman baths were also cultural centres, built from the start with a library, a two-room arrangement with one room for Greek and one for Latin texts.

Libraries were filled with parchment scrolls as at Library of Pergamum and on papyrus scrolls as at Alexandria: the export of prepared writing materials was a staple of commerce. There were a few institutional or royal libraries which were open to an educated public (such as the Serapeum collection of the Library of Alexandria, once the largest library in the ancient world),[20] but on the whole collections were private. In those rare cases where it was possible for a scholar to consult library books there seems to have been no direct access to the stacks. In all recorded cases the books were kept in a relatively small room where the staff went to get them for the readers, who had to consult them in an adjoining hall or covered walkway. Most of the works in catalogs were of a religious nature, such as volumes of the Bible or religious service books. "In a number of cases the library was entirely theological and liturgical, and in the greater part of the libraries the non-ecclesiastical content did not reach one third of the total"[34] In addition to these types of works, in some libraries during that time Plato was especially popular. In the early Middle Ages, Aristotle was more popular. Additionally, there was quite a bit of censoring within libraries of the time; many works that were "scientific and metaphysical" were not included in the majority of libraries during that time period.[34] Latin authors were better represented within library holdings and Roman works were less represented. Cicero was also an especially popular author along with the histories of Sallust.[34] Additionally, Virgil was universally represented at most of the medieval libraries of the time. One of the most popular was Ovid, mentioned by approximately twenty French catalogues and nearly thirty German ones.[34] Surprisingly, old Roman textbooks on grammar were still being used at that time.

In 213 BC during the reign of Emperor Qin Shi Huang most books were ordered destroyed. The Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) reversed this policy for replacement copies, and created three imperial libraries. Liu Xin a curator of the imperial library was the first to establish a library classification system and the first book notation system. At this time the library catalog was written on scrolls of fine silk and stored in silk bags. Important new technological innovations include the use of paper and block printing.[35][36] Wood-block printing, facilitated the large-scale reproduction of classic Buddhist texts which were avidly collected in many private libraries that flourished during the T'ang Dynasty (618–906 AD).

The Ming Dynasty in 1407 founded the imperial library, the Wen Yuan Pavilion. It also sponsored the massive compilation of the Yongle Encyclopedia, containing 11,000 volumes including copies of over 7000 books. It was soon destroyed, but similar very large compilations appeared in 1725 and 1772.

Malatestiana Library of Cesena, the first European civic library[37]

During the Late Antiquity and Middle Ages periods, there was no Rome of the kind that ruled the Mediterranean for centuries and spawned the culture that produced twenty-eight public libraries in the urbs Roma.[38] The empire had been divided then later re-united again under Constantine the Great who moved the capital of the Roman Empire in 330 AD to the city of Byzantium which was renamed Constantinople.[39] The Roman intellectual culture that flourished in ancient times was undergoing a transformation as the academic world moved from laymen to Christian clergy.[40] As the West crumbled, books and libraries flourished and flowed east toward the Byzantine Empire.[41] There, four different types of libraries were established: imperial, patriarchal, monastic, and private.[42] Each had its own purpose and, as a result, their survival varied.

Christianity was a new force in Europe and many of the faithful saw Hellenistic culture as pagan. As such, many classical Greek works, written on scrolls, were left to decay as only Christian texts were thought fit for preservation in a codex, the progenitor of the modern book.[43] In the East, however, this was not the case as many of these classical Greek and Roman texts were copied.[44] "[F]ormerly paper was rare and expensive, so every spare page of available books was pressed into use. Thus a seventeenth-century edition of the Ignatian epistles, in Mar Saba, had copied onto its last pages, probably in the early eighteenth century, a passage allegedly from the letters of Clement of Alexandria".[45] Old manuscripts were also used to bind new books because of the costs associated with paper and also because of the scarcity of new paper.

In Byzantium, much of this work devoted to preserving Hellenistic thought in codex form was performed in scriptoriums by monks.[46] While monastic library scriptoriums flourished throughout the East and West, the rules governing them were generally the same.[47] Barren and sun-lit rooms (because candles were a source of fire) were major features of the scriptorium that was both a model of production and monastic piety.[48] Monks scribbled away for hours a day, interrupted only by meals and prayers.[49] With such production, medieval monasteries began to accumulate large libraries. These libraries were devoted solely to the education of the monks and were seen as essential to their spiritual development.[50] Although most of these texts that were produced were Christian in nature, many monastic leaders saw common virtues in the Greek classics. As a result, many of these Greek works were copied, and thus saved, in monastic scriptoriums.[51]

When Europe passed into the Dark Ages, Byzantine scriptoriums laboriously preserved Greco-Roman classics. As a result, Byzantium revived Classical models of education and libraries.[52] The Imperial Library of Constantinople was an important depository of ancient knowledge. Constantine himself wanted such a library but his short rule denied him the ability to see his vision to fruition. His son Constantius II made this dream a reality and created an imperial library in a portico of the royal palace.[53] He ruled for 24 years and accelerated the development of the library and the intellectual culture that came with such a vast accumulation of books.[54]

Constantius II appointed Themistius, a pagan philosopher and teacher, as chief architect of this library building program. Themistius set about a bold program to create an imperial public library that would be the centerpiece of the new intellectual capital of Constantinople.[55] Classical authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Isocrates, Thucydides, Homer, and Zeno were sought. Themeistius hired calligraphers and craftsman to produce the actual codices. He also appointed educators and created a university-like school centered around the library.[56]

After the death of Constantius II, Julian the Apostate, a bibliophile intellectual, ruled briefly for less than three years. Despite this, he had a profound impact on the imperial library and sought both Christian and pagan books for its collections.[53] Later, the Emperor Valens hired Greek and Latin scribes full-time with from the royal treasury to copy and repair manuscripts.[57]

At its height in the 5th century, the Imperial Library of Constantinople had 120,000 volumes and was the largest library in Europe.[58] A fire in 477 consumed the entire library but it was rebuilt only to be burned again in 726, 1204, and in 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks.[59]

Patriarchal libraries fared no better, and sometimes worse, than the Imperial Library. The Library of the Patriarchate of Constantinople was founded most likely during the reign of Constantine the Great in the 4th century.[60] As a theological library, it was known to have employed a library classification system.[61] It also served as a repository of several ecumenical councils such as the Council of Nicea, Council of Ephesus, and the Council of Chalcedon. The library, which employed a librarian and assistants, may have been originally located in the Patriarch's official residence before it was moved to the Thomaites Triclinus in the 7th century. While much is not known about the actual library itself, it is known that many of its contents were subject to destruction as religious in-fighting ultimately resulted in book burnings.[62]

During this period, small private libraries existed. Many of these were owned by church members and the aristocracy.[63] Teachers also were known to have small personal libraries as well as wealthy bibliophiles who could afford the highly ornate books of the period.[64]

Thus, in the 6th century, at the close of the Classical period, the great libraries of the Mediterranean world remained those of Constantinople and Alexandria. Cassiodorus, minister to Theodoric, established a monastery at Vivarium in the toe of Italy (modern Calabria) with a library where he attempted to bring Greek learning to Latin readers and preserve texts both sacred and secular for future generations. As its unofficial librarian, Cassiodorus not only collected as many manuscripts as he could, he also wrote treatises aimed at instructing his monks in the proper uses of reading and methods for copying texts accurately. In the end, however, the library at Vivarium was dispersed and lost within a century.

Through Origen and especially the scholarly presbyter Pamphilus of Caesarea, an avid collector of books of Scripture, the theological school of Caesarea won a reputation for having the most extensive ecclesiastical library of the time, containing more than 30,000 manuscripts: Gregory Nazianzus, Basil the Great, Jerome and others came and studied there.

Inside a Qur'anic library in Chinguetti, Mauritania

The first libraries in Muslim lands were not necessarily for the public, but they contained much knowledge. The need for the preservation of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, and the Traditions of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, is what led to the collection of writings in the Muslim world. Where traditions and history used to be oral, the need to preserve the words of the Quran necessitated a method of preserving the words by some means other than orally. Mosques that were the center of everything in a Muslim society's day-to-day life became also libraries that stored and preserved all knowledge, from the Quran to books on religion, philosophy and science.

"Under the Abbasids, Muslims formed the vanguard of civilization. The Abbasids were influenced by the Quran and Hadith such as, "the ink of scholar is equal to the blood of martyr,[65] "stressing the value of knowledge." With the passion of the Caliphs to establish centers of knowledge, the Muslim world quickly began to have different centers that housed libraries which contained encyclopedias, translations, commentaries and treatises written by Muslim philosophers, scholars and scientists.

With the invention of paper, the Muslim world quickly began to progress in its development of libraries, and "libraries (royal, public, specialised, private) had become common and bookmen (authors, translators, copiers, illuminators, librarians, booksellers' collectors) from all classes and sections of society, of all nationalities and ethnic backgrounds, vied with each other in the production and distribution of books."[66]

By the 8th century, first Iranians and then Arabs had imported the craft of papermaking from China,[67] with a paper mill already at work in Baghdad in 794 then called Bagdatikos.[68] By the 9th century, public libraries started to appear in many Islamic cities. They were called "halls of Science" or dar al-'ilm. They were each endowed by Islamic sects with the purpose of representing their tenets as well as promoting the dissemination of secular knowledge. In Baghdad, the library was known as the House of Wisdom.[69] It also was a university where numerous scholars and copyists translated works from other nations into Arabic. The 9th-century Abbasid Caliph al-Mutawakkil of Iraq, ordered the construction of a "zawiyat qurra" – an enclosure for readers which was "lavishly furnished and equipped". In Shiraz Adhud al-Daula (d. 983) set up a library, described by the medieval historian, al-Muqaddasi, as "a complex of buildings surrounded by gardens with lakes and waterways. The buildings were topped with domes, and comprised an upper and a lower story with a total, according to the chief official, of 360 rooms.... In each department, catalogues were placed on a shelf... the rooms were furnished with carpets".[70] The libraries often employed translators and copyists in large numbers, in order to render into Arabic the bulk of the available Persian, Greek, Roman and Sanskrit non-fiction and the classics of literature.

From the art, Muslims developed papermaking into an industry.[67] As a result of this technical enhancement, the books were more easily manufactured and they were more broadly accessible. Coincided with the encouragement of science and a breakthrough in the translation movement, public and private libraries started to boost all around Islamic lands. A series of outstanding libraries within the Islamic territories were founded and flourished alongside Islam spread.[71][72][16] They were called House of Knowledge or Dar al-'ilm. At the time libraries were the place that books and manuscripts were collected, read, copied, reproduced and borrowed by students, masters and even ordinary people. In addition to remarkable standing-alone libraries, there were prevalent medium-sized book collections that were mainly located inside the schools or Madrasa throughout the major Islamic cities. Libraries’ resources, based on their serving target groups and the founder's set of interests and the Islamic sect, entailed a broad range of subjects e.g. religion, science, astrology, geography, literature, history and linguistics.

Throughout the Islamic era, not only private and academic libraries, but also public libraries became very popular. The patrons were not limited to elites, rather the resources were openly accessible to everyone. Some of the libraries were said to let patrons check out up to 200 items.

The library designers noticed the comfort of readers and information seekers. The floor of reading rooms was covered by carpets. Also, openings such as doors and windows were secured closed as to protect patrons against cold drafts.[73] The libraries often employed translators and copyists in large numbers, in order to render the books into Arabic from Persian, Greek, Roman and Sanskrit.

Islamic states in Africa began to see a rapid development in education from the 11th century. Libraries of particular importance would include that of Timbuktu, which held many manuscripts that were important for over 600 years in the Ghanan, Mali and Songhai empires. One of the most notable authors was Ahmad Baba who wrote over 40 manuscripts – widely considered as being one of the most influential scholars from Timbuktu. Many of the manuscripts and buildings were destroyed by the Arab-European invasion in 1591 and writers, such as Ahmad Baba were taken into captivity.[74] Despite this and the poor preservation conditions as many as 700,000 manuscripts still survive today.[75] This flowering of Islamic learning ceased centuries later when learning began declining in the Islamic world, after many of these libraries were destroyed by Mongol invasions. Others were victim of wars and religious strife in the Islamic world. However, a few examples of these medieval libraries, such as the libraries of Chinguetti in West Africa, remain intact and relatively unchanged. Another ancient library from this period which is still operational and expanding is the Central Library of Astan Quds Razavi in the Iranian city of Mashhad, which has been operating for more than six centuries.

The contents of these Islamic libraries were copied by Christian monks in Muslim/Christian border areas, particularly Spain and Sicily. From there they eventually made their way into other parts of Christian Europe. These copies joined works that had been preserved directly by Christian monks from Greek and Roman originals, as well as copies Western Christian monks made of Byzantine works. The resulting conglomerate libraries are the basis of every modern library today.

Islam

Qur'an manuscript on display at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina

The centrality of the Qurʾān as the prototype of the written word in Islam bears significantly on the role of books within its intellectual tradition and educational system.[76] An early impulse in Islam was to manage reports of events, key figures and their sayings and actions. Thus, "the onus of being the last 'People of the Book' engendered an ethos of [librarianship]"[77] early on and the establishment of important book repositories throughout the Muslim world have occurred ever since.

13th century manuscript, drawn by Al-Wasiti of the celebrated book “The Assemblies”. Written by Hariri, shows a library in Baghdad

Upon the spread of Islam, libraries in newly Islamic lands (7th–14th century) had a strength organization and knew a brief period of expansion in the Middle East, North Africa, Sicily, and Spain. In this period, books were organized by subject. Within the subject, the materials were further organized by when the libraries gained the item, not by last name of the author or the title of the book. Also, Islamic libraries may be the first to have implemented a catalogue of owned materials. The content of a bookshelf was recorded on paper and attached to the end of shelf. Like the Christian libraries, they mostly contained books which were made of paper, and took a codex or modern form instead of scrolls; they could be found in mosques, private homes, and universities, from Timbuktu to Afghanistan and modern day Pakistan. In Aleppo, for example, the largest and probably the oldest mosque library, the Sufiya, located at the city's Grand Umayyad Mosque, contained a large book collection of which 10,000 volumes were reportedly bequeathed by the city's most famous ruler, Prince Sayf al-Dawla.[78] Ibn al-Nadim's bibliography Fihrist demonstrates the devotion of medieval Muslim scholars to books and reliable sources; it contains a description of thousands of books circulating in the Islamic world circa 1000, including an entire section for books about the doctrines of other religions. Modern Islamic libraries for the most part do not hold these antique books; many were lost, destroyed by Mongols,[79] or removed to European libraries and museums during the colonial period.[80]

The spread of religion and philosophy in South and East Asia spurred the development of writing and books. Chinese emperors were very supportive of this culture. Chinese printing and paper making, which predate Western development, gave birth to a thriving book culture in East Asia.[90] Several Asian religious and philosophical movements are responsible for stimulating learning, printing and book collecting: Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Jainism.[90] Jainism, a major faith of the Indian subcontinent, had a tradition of religious, scientific, and cultural scholarship. Early practitioners of the faith not only produced scriptural writing the first century BC, but also established some of Asia's earliest libraries.[90] Mainly housed in temples, these libraries later became known as "Jain Knowledge Warehouses" and is responsible for the preservation of hundreds of thousands handwritten manuscripts.

The invention of paper in China allowed the Chinese to create an early form of printing (stone-rubbing). Writings the sixth-century philosopher, Confucius, were originally inscribed on stone tablets. To achieve this early form of printing the Chinese would push soft paper onto the stone, apply ink to the back of the sheet, resulting in a black background with white letters.[90] The Chinese also employed inked carved woodblock to produce printed materials. One of the major Buddhist canons, the Tripitaka, was published in 5,000 volumes using more than 130,000 individual woodblocks.[90] In the eleventh century movable type was developed in China and Koreans established the first foundry for producing movable type. In spite of these developments, woodblock printing remained the norm in China, Korea, and Japan. Each ruler in China compiled its own official written archives. Every emperor decided which philosophical texts, which accounts of history, which rituals of faith, and what poetry and literature would be permitted in the empire; oftentimes chronicling their own version of the previous ruler's history. Confucian and Buddhist writings that were brought to Korea and Japan are directly responsible for the continued development of book publishing and library building in East Asia.[90]

Buddhist scriptures, educational materials, and histories were stored in libraries in pre-modern Southeast Asia. In Burma, a royal library called the Pitakataik was legendarily founded by King Anawrahta;[91] in the 18th century, British envoy Michael Symes, on visiting this library, wrote that "it is not improbable that his Birman majesty may possess a more numerous library than any potentate, from the banks of the Danube to the borders of China". In Thailand libraries called ho trai were built throughout the country, usually on stilts above a pond to prevent bugs from eating at the books.

Science library of Upper Lusatia in Görlitz, Germany

Merton College Library

In the Early Middle Ages, monastery libraries developed, such as the important one at the Abbey of Montecassino in Italy.[92] Books were usually chained to the shelves, reflecting the fact that manuscripts, which were created via the labour-intensive process of hand copying, were valuable possessions.[93] This hand-copying was often accomplished by travelling monks who made the treks to the sources of knowledge and illumination they sought for learning or to copy the manuscripts held by other monasteries for their own monastic libraries.[94]

Despite this protectiveness, many libraries loaned books if provided with security deposits (usually money or a book of equal value). Lending was a means by which books could be copied and spread. In 1212 the council of Paris condemned those monasteries that still forbade loaning books, reminding them that lending is "one of the chief works of mercy."[95] The early libraries located in monastic cloisters and associated with scriptoria were collections of lecterns with books chained to them. Shelves built above and between back-to-back lecterns were the beginning of bookpresses. The chain was attached at the fore-edge of a book rather than to its spine. Book presses came to be arranged in carrels (perpendicular to the walls and therefore to the windows) in order to maximize lighting, with low bookcases in front of the windows. This "stall system" (i.e. fixed bookcases perpendicular to exterior walls pierced by closely spaced windows) was characteristic of English institutional libraries. In European libraries, bookcases were arranged parallel to and against the walls. This "wall system" was first introduced on a large scale in Spain's El Escorial.

As extensions of the Catholic Church, medieval libraries' collections often excluded materials considered to be heretical or "pagan", such as the works of Plato and Aristotle.[96]

Also, in Eastern Christianity monastery libraries kept important manuscripts. The most important of them were the ones in the monasteries of Mount Athos for Orthodox Christians, and the library of the Saint Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt for the Coptic Church.

Reading room of the Laurentian Library

From the 15th century in central and northern Italy, libraries of humanists and their enlightened patrons provided a nucleus around which an "academy" of scholars congregated in each Italian city of consequence. Malatesta Novello, lord of Cesena, founded the Malatestiana Library. Cosimo de Medici in Florence established his own collection, which formed the basis of the Laurentian Library.[97] In Rome, the papal collections were brought together by Pope Nicholas V, in separate Greek and Latin libraries, and housed by Pope Sixtus IV, who consigned the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana to the care of his librarian, the humanist Bartolomeo Platina in February 1475.[98]

The Hungarian Bibliotheca Corviniana was one of the first and largest Renaissance Greek-Latin libraries, established by Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary between 1458 and 1490. In 1490, the library consisted of about 3,000 codices or "Corvinae". Beatrix of Aragon, Queen of Hungary, encouraged his work with the Bibliotheca Corviniana. After Matthias' death in 1490 many of the manuscripts were taken from library and dispersed, subsequently the Turkish invasion of Hungary in the 16th century saw the remaining valuable manuscripts taken to Turkey.[99]

In the 16th century Sixtus V bisected Bramante's Cortile del Belvedere with a cross-wing to house the Apostolic Library in suitable magnificence. The 16th and 17th centuries saw other privately endowed libraries assembled in Rome: the Vallicelliana, formed from the books of Saint Filippo Neri, with other distinguished libraries such as that of Cesare Baronio, the Biblioteca Angelica founded by the Augustinian Angelo Rocca, which was the only truly public library in Counter-Reformation Rome; the Biblioteca Alessandrina with which Pope Alexander VII endowed the University of Rome; the Biblioteca Casanatense of the Cardinal Girolamo Casanate; and finally the Biblioteca Corsiniana founded by the bibliophile Clement XII Corsini and his nephew Cardinal Neri Corsini, still housed in Palazzo Corsini in via della Lungara. The Republic of Venice patronized the foundation of the Biblioteca Marciana, based on the library of Cardinal Basilios Bessarion. In Milan Cardinal Federico Borromeo founded the Biblioteca Ambrosiana.

This trend soon spread outside of Italy, for example Louis III, Elector Palatine founded the Bibliotheca Palatina of Heidelberg.

These libraries had fewer volumes than modern libraries; but they had many valuable manuscripts of Greek, Latin and Biblical works. After the invention of the printing press, many Renaissance libraries began to collect printed texts of useful information as well as historical manuscripts; this change occurred between about 1550 and 1650. This transition of collections during the Renaissance was not just a shift from manuscripts to printed texts, but also from books as expensive luxury aesthetic artifacts both in print and in manuscript form to an expenditure on multiple copies of printed texts which held valuable, practical information.[100] One example is the library at the Ducal Palace in Urbino, Italy. For instance the Ducal Palace library of Urbino contains an older library with texts which mainly served to record the history of the Duke of Urbino's family and show his magnificence, and a newer library which was an information retrieval system for research and discussion by contemporary scholars.[101] The ducal library also housed what we would consider as archival materials, such as Renaissance newsletter manuscripts, and diplomatic, engineering, military, and other political and moral documents.[102]

Tianyi Chamber, founded in 1561 by Fan Qin during the Ming Dynasty, is the oldest existing library in China. In its heyday it boasted a collection of 70,000 volumes of antique books.

Thomas Bodley founded the Bodleian Library in 1602 as an early public library.

The 17th and 18th centuries include what is known as a golden age of libraries;[103] during this some of the more important libraries were founded in Europe. Francis Trigge Chained Library of St. Wulfram's Church, Grantham, Lincolnshire was founded in 1598 by the rector of nearby Welbourne.[104] This library is considered the "ancestor of public libraries" because patrons were not required to be members of a particular college or church to use the library.[105] Trigge's library held over 350 books, and his inclusion of both Catholic and Protestant resources is considered unique for the time, since religious conflicts during the Reformation years were common.[105]

Thomas Bodley founded the Bodleian Library, which was open to the "whole republic of the learned", Norwich City library was established in 1608[106] and the British Library was established in 1753. Chetham's Library in Manchester, which claims to be the oldest public library in the English-speaking world, opened in 1653.[107] Other early town libraries of the UK include those of Ipswich (1612), Bristol (founded in 1613 and opened in 1615), and Leicester (1632). Shrewsbury School also opened its library to townsfolk.[108]

The Bibliothèque Mazarine was initially the personal library of cardinal Mazarin (1602–1661), who was a great bibliophile. His first library, arranged by his librarian, Gabriel Naudé, was dispersed when he had to flee Paris during the Fronde. He then began a second library with what was left of the first, assisted by the successor to Naudé, François de La Poterie. At his death he bequeathed his library, which he had opened to scholars since 1643, to the Collège des Quatre-Nations which he had founded in 1661. The Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève was also founded in Paris, the Austrian National Library in Vienna, the National Central Library in Florence, the Prussian State Library in Berlin, the Załuski Library in Warsaw and the M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library in St Petersburg.[109]

But this golden age was not just some prosaic period of great expansion to the number and accessibility of the libraries of Europe; it was also a period of great conflict. The Reformation did not just inspire a redistribution of power but also a redistribution of wealth and knowledge. While the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) decimated the population of Europe (from 21 million at the beginning of the conflict to 13 million by the end) it also aided in the redistribution of this wealth and knowledge.[90]^:116

Often the plunder of this conflict included the recovery of books from looted monasteries and libraries.[90]^:116 Given the large cost associated with the creation of the codex it should come as little surprise that books would be seen as a prize of both pecuniary and scholastic wealth, enough that a Bavarian noble named Maximilian I Duke of Bavaria sent the captured contents of the Palatine Library of Heidelberg to the Vatican as a trophy to the Pope Gregory XV.[110][90]^:118–119 [111] On the other side of the conflict, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden specifically targeted Jesuit schools and seminaries and had wagon loads of loot (seized books and manuscripts) returned to the libraries of his home.[90]^:118 Large volumes of books changed hands during the Thirty Years War and eventually found their way across Europe where new libraries sprang up to house these redistributed treasures.

In addition to stores of knowledge being shuffled around as spoils of war, the printing press created economies of scale that allowed for the exchange of books to become more commonplace.[90]^:119–120 Book fairs were the most merchants most common choice of sale and catalogs were their most common choice of organization.[90]^:120

The collectors of this period helped shape the 'form' of libraries. We can see echoes of many of their innovations in the tropes of today's libraries. As noted previously, influenced by the ideals of Gabriel Naude, Cardinal Jules Mazarin proclaimed his library "open to everybody without exception".[90]^:122 Also, possibly inspiring a trope, Sir Robert Bruce Cotton organized his library with the placement of busts of ancient Romans at the tops of his shelves, and cataloged his contents alphanumerically based on the name of the shelf (bust) and the book's physical position on the shelf (by number of books preceding it).[90]^:123–124

At the start of the 18th century, libraries were becoming increasingly public and were more frequently lending libraries. The 18th century saw the switch from closed parochial libraries to lending libraries. Before this time, public libraries were parochial in nature and libraries frequently chained their books to desks.[112] Libraries also were not uniformly open to the public.[113]

The British Museum was established in 1751 and had a library containing over 50,000 books.

Biblioteca Palafoxiana in Puebla City, Mexico, is recognized by the UNESCO for being the first public library in the Americas.[114][115][116] Founded in 1646 by Juan de Palafox y Mendoza

Even though the British Museum existed at this time and contained over 50,000 books, the national library was not open to the public, or even to a majority of the population. Access to the Museum depended on passes, of which there was sometimes a waiting period of three to four weeks. Moreover, the library was not open to browsing. Once a pass to the library had been issued, the reader was taken on a tour of it. Many readers complained that the tour was much too short.[117]

Although most libraries followed this model of patron restriction, there were exceptions such as the Ducal Library at Wolfenbüttel, which was open every weekday morning and afternoon. The library had a diverse set of patrons of whom a large percentage were middle-class and non-academic users. Between 1714 and 1799, the library loaned 31,485 books, mostly fiction, to 1,648 patrons.[118]

Private libraries

The Linen Hall Library was an 18th-century subscription library. Pictured in 1888, shortly before its demolition.

Private subscription libraries functioned much like commercial subscription libraries, with some variations. One of the most popular versions of the private subscription library was the gentlemen only library. Membership was restricted to the proprietors or shareholders, and ranged from a dozen or two to between four and five hundred.[128]

The Liverpool Subscription library was a gentlemen only library. In 1798, it was renamed the Athenaeum when it was rebuilt with a newsroom and coffeehouse. It had an entrance fee of one guinea and an annual subscription of five shillings.[129] An analysis of the registers for the first twelve years provides glimpses of middle-class reading habits in a mercantile community at this period. The largest and most popular sections of the library were history, antiquities, and geography, with 283 titles and 6,121 borrowings, and belles-lettres, with 238 titles and 3,313 borrowings.[130][131]

Circulating library and stationery shop, Gulgong, Australia 1870

Private subscription libraries held a greater amount of control over both membership and the types of books in the library. Cheap fiction was virtually absent.[132] Subscription libraries prided themselves on respectability. The highest percentage of subscribers were often landed proprietors, gentry, and the old professions.[133]

Towards the end of the 18th century and in the first decades of the 19th century the need for books and general education made itself felt among social classes created by the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.[134] The late 18th century saw a rise in subscription libraries intended for the use of tradesmen. In 1797, there was established at Kendal the Economical Library, "designed principally for the use and instruction of the working classes".[135] There was also the Artizans' library established at Birmingham in 1799. The entrance fee was 3 shillings. The subscription was 1 shilling 6 pence per quarter. This was a library of general literature. Novels, at first excluded, were afterwards admitted on condition that they did not account for more than one-tenth of the annual income.[128]

Benjamin Franklin led the founding of the first American subscription library. In Philadelphia, Franklin formed "a club of mutual improvements" calling themselves the "Junto", which meant a council or a combination of individuals organized for a specific purpose. Because the men in this club had a steady income, they could afford to be a part of this club and to purchase books. Only some had enough to be considered a library; together they shared what they all had.[136]

• Bibliography
• Library science
• Public libraries
• History of the Internet

• Black, Alistair. A New History of the English Public Library: Social and Intellectual Contexts, 1850–1914, London and New York: Leicester University Press (1996); The Public Library in Britain 1914–2000 (2000)
• Casson, Lionel. (2001) Libraries in the Ancient World, Yale University Press; 169 pp.
• Harris, Michael H. (1999). History of Libraries of the Western World (4th ed.). Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-7715-3.
• Harris, Michael H. ed. (1971) Reader in American Library History online edition; articles by scholars
• Hoare, Peter, ed. (3 vol. 2006) The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, 2072 pages
• Hobson, Anthony. Great Libraries, Littlehampton Book Services (1970), surveys 27 famous European libraries (and 5 American ones) in 300pp
• Krause, Louise Beerstecher (1898), Reading List on Library Buildings, Boston: Boston Book Company
• Lerner, Fred. (2nd ed. 2009) The Story of Libraries: From the Invention of Writing to the Computer Age, London, Bloomsbury
• Martin, Lowell A. (1998) Enrichment: A History of the Public Library in the United States in the Twentieth Century, Scarecow Press
• Murray, Stuart A.P. (2012) The Library: An Illustrated History. American Library Association, Chicago.
• Staikos, Konstantinos, The History of the Library in Western Civilization, translated by Timothy Cullen, New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2004–2013 (six volumes).
• Stam, David H. (2001). International Dictionary of Library Histories. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781579582449., 1100pp; covers 122 major libraries in Europe, 59 in U.S, and 44 others, plus 47 thematic essays
• Wedgeworth, Robert; et al., eds. (1993). World Encyclopedia of Library and Information Services (3rd ed.). American Library Association. ISBN 9780838906095.
• Wiegand, Wayne A.; Donald G. Davis, Jr. (1994). Encyclopedia of Library History. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780824057879.; covers 60 major libraries