A Brief History of Libraries

The inception of libraries and their evolution.
Can our libraries survive the modern age?
by Tania Dooley

New York City Library 
via Wikimedia Commons. 
Click here for a link to the NYC library.

Brief Outline

1.     Introduction

2.     Ancient Libraries

a.      The Sumerians

b.     The Library of Alexandria

3.     The Middle Ages

4.     Early Libraries in America

5.     Our modern Libraries

Introduction

     As people gain awareness of the history and function of the first libraries from all over the world, they begin to value and recognize its’ tremendous importance on the development of our societies and our cultures. The ability to access books and the information they contain is the key to our democracy, and our freedom. This post takes you from the beginning, when writing began since it is intrinsically tied to the creation of a system that required organizing the written word. Whether that medium of writing was clay tablets, wood tablets, papyrus, or bound books, it has always been more than just this physical format you can hold in your hands.

"The History of Mankind" 
Via WikiCommons, 
By O. Von Corven - Tolzmann, 
Don Heinrich, Alfred Hessel and 
Reuben Peiss

           In researching information on ancient libraries there is only scant evidence; there are no pictures nor paintings and when there are, they are only artist’s renditions of what they may have been like. At best we have information retrieved from archeological ruins to understand the splendor of early libraries in the ancient world. Given that libraries were ever-constant target of invaders, books and records were frequently vanquished along with leaders and peoples. From excavations we can muster together a sense of the way early libraries were set up, how they gathered their collections, and who they served.

Ancient Libraries

          The library as we know it has transformed many times over the centuries, and not just in its structure but in the contents they held. The holdings evolved from clay tablets to scrolls, from codex to wood tablets to our most modern bound books. Cuneiform is the earliest form of writing developed by the ancient Sumerians, clay tablets were the medium, our earliest form of books. "Learning from them [tablets] required long training and much practice...literacy was by and large limited to a small professional class, the scribes" (Casson, 2001, p. 2). Click here for more extensive information and vivid pictures on cuneiform.

Cuneiform on clay tablets 
via Wikimedia commons

          As civilizations grew, cities were formed, and the complexities surrounding them required recordings; the earliest of these were on clay tablets. The sheer number of clay tablets that would have been produced required an organizational system to store them. In the 1970’s, one of the oldest libraries known dating back to 2500 B.C.E., was excavated in the city of Elba, in what is now known as northern Syria (Murray, 2012, p. 8). Most of the early tablets that were found were records of transactions such as receipts, to inventories, to contracts of marriage, and divorce settlements (Casson, 2001, p. 2). From excavations archeologists have unearthed rows of tablets and scrolls, neatly categorized with a systematic order, thus our first libraries.

         According to Kells (2017), “The greatest scroll library in all history was assembled downstream from its source of papyrus” (p.25). It was in this port city of Egypt, Alexandria that one of the greatest ancient libraries was erected, the Library of Alexandria. It was named after Alexander the Great, a great military leader who conquered the Mediterranean seaport, but the library was most likely built under the reign of Ptolemy II, though it was Ptolemy I’s brainchild (Casson, 2001, p. 34). It was at this great library, often called the Museum, that people convened from all over the world to read and to study, to write, and to take in the magnificent grounds. This library amassed a great collection in all subjects, from books that were donated, to books that were bought, or copied or confiscated; the administrators of this library wanted to have at least a copy of every existing book known. And if the policy of the time was to acquire everything (Casson, 2001, p. 35), the culture arose to draw everyone. Of course though, that meant everyone who could read, something still privy to scribes, scholars, or anyone in the aristocratic class.

Julius Caesar on horseback 
dictating to scribes, 
by By Jaques de Gheyn II (1565–1629)
Via WikiCommons

     As it happens, after all this effort and dutiful curation of resources, not much remains, mainly due to a series of unfortunate events. One event set the course for a continued disastrous end to this library, the blaze at the harbor of Alexandria. When Julius Caesar set fire to ships at the Mediterranean port where an invading group lay waiting, it eventually reached the library, though it is unclear how much was destroyed. But then over the centuries as the city faced unrest, political turmoil, and more invasions, things of importance were destroyed including the remaining contents of the library. From Christians destroying any form of paganism, to Muslim invaders burning books, this library’s days had been numbered.

The Middle Ages

     During the Early Middle Ages, roughly from 500 A.D. to 1500 A.D., most libraries were run by cathedrals and monasteries (Kells, 2017, p. 39). It was during this time that monks had the painstaking task of handwriting and copying books, including the Bible. “Over the centuries, monks copied thousands of manuscripts and books: The Scriptures…the gospels, and the writings of church leaders” (Murray, 2012, p. 31).

 

The work of monks in the Middle Ages
Via Wikimedia Commons

In keeping with the tradition of the time and way that cathedrals were built, with stain-glass windows, sculptures of saints, and ornate décor, some of the most beautiful works of illuminated manuscripts were created. Illuminated manuscripts were pages or books that were designed with colorful pictures mainly of saints or anything biblical, often using gold, and an old-style script. 

Illuminated Manuscript, 
Via Wikimedia
 Public domain

 Just around the High Middle ages around the mid 1400’s, Johannes Guttenberg invented a machine that would change the way books were copied, the number of books in general, and thus gave birth to a proliferation of literacy. He invented what is known as the movable type or, the printing press, which was a quicker, and more automatic way of copying books than the method which had been employed before. This idea and method were not entirely new, as the Chinese had developed a form of movable type in the eleventh century (Murray, 2012, p. 46). The invention of the printing press along with the ideas of the Renaissance led to the growth and the size of libraries (Rubin, 2016, p. 47).

 Early libraries in America

George Peabody library at 
John Hopkins University 
by Nikhil Kulkarni
Via WikiCommons

     The first libraries that sprung up in the colonies of North America were in universities. The first institutional library was established at Harvard University, and was “founded by a donation of books from a clergyman intent on propagating his faith” (Murray, 2012, p. 143). Soon after, university libraries around the nation became an essential part of the educational experience.
             

     Some founding fathers who were essential in the foundation of libraries were Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.  

Benjamin Franklin
Via WikiCommons

     It was Franklin however, who is credited with establishing the first public libraries, beginning with the Library Company of Philadelphia (Murray, 2012, p. 148). Soon after this President John Adams and Thomas Jefferson approved legislation that would fund and begin the Library of Congress (LOC, 2020).  

        The foundations of public libraries during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were also made possible by philanthropic benefactors such as Andrew Carnegie, a steel and railroad magnate (Ryan, 2013, p. 38). According to Rubin (2016), “The mission…was to assist individuals’ self-improvement and the search for truth” (p. 49). The rise of these forms of libraries would one day give way to the rise of the school library.

Our modern libraries

     As history has shown, the stories of books and libraries have always been transforming. Whether it was the evolution of the written word from clay tablets to modern books, it has always been more than just this physical format. It is the way our ideas about the world and about ourselves intermingle with what we read, and how we are changed as a result. We keep some ideas because they instinctively resonate, and we discard or ponder on the things we cannot yet understand. To amass a collection of books on our own and for our own collection is costly, and what good does it do if only a few are well-read and educated as a result? Libraries have been able to fill in the gaps of information and education for the masses, and they have evolved in response to how society was changing, always to keep up with what they needed. 

     The librarian of today knows that in order to keep this institution alive, we cannot spread the word of its’ importance ourselves, instead, we will need advocates who will aid in keeping them as an important resource for our society. Libraries will keep intriguing and drawing people, they will keep educating and filling minds; but they must be free and they must be accessible, and most importantly, they must stay intact. Indeed, they must continue to exist and proliferate; the progress of our society depends on that.


~ That is your bit of history from around the world.

References

Casson, L. (2001). Libraries in the ancient world. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Kells, S. (2017). The Library. Melbourne, AU: The Text Publishing Company.

Library of Congress, 2020. “History of the Library of Congress.” Retrieved from
https://www.loc.gov/about/history-of-the-library/

Murray, S.A.P. (2012). The Library. An Illustrated History. New York, NY: Skyhorse
Publishing.

Rubin, R.E. (2016). Foundations of library and information science. Chicago, Il: Neal- Schuman.

Ryan, S.M. (2013). “An idea likely too big.: John B. Stetson University pursuit of an academic Carnegie library in the early twentieth century.” Library and Information History 29(1), 38-58. Retrieved from https://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=35&sid=d832a617-1936-4d69-8cfb-5d20295802d7%40sessionmgr4006

Pictures in the order shown

New York Public Library via Wikimedia Commons
“The Memory of Mankind” By O. Von Corven - Tolzmann, Don Heinrich, Alfred Hessel and Reuben Peiss. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2001, Public Domain. Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2307486
Cuneiform on clay tablets, via Wikimedia Commons.
Gary Todd. Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/101561334@N08/28296940115/, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77632369
Julis Caesar on horseback dictating to scribes, by Jaques de Gheyn II (1565-1629), WikiCommons.
Illuminated Manuscripts. Wikimedia Commons.Monks. Wikimedia Commons.
George Peabody library at John Hopkins. WikiCommons.
Benjamin Franklin. WikiCommons.
Library of Congress. WikiCommons.
Andrew Carnegie. WikiCommons.