History of libraries

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The history of the library began with the first effort to organize a collection of documents (recorded knowledge), which happened probably around 1200 BC. Topics of interest include accessibility of the collection, acquisition of materials, arrangement and finding tools, the book trade, the influence of the physical properties of the different writing materials, language distribution, role in education, rates of literacy, budgets, staffing, libraries for specially targeted audiences, architectural merit, patterns of usage, and the role of libraries in a nation's cultural heritage, and the role of government, church or private sponsorship. Since the 1960s issues of computerization and digitization come to the fore.

Library history is the academic discipline devoted to the study of the history of libraries; it is a subfield of library science and historiography.

Contents

Ancient history [edit]

Main article: List of libraries in the ancient world

At Ugarit in Syria excavations have revealed a palace library, temple library, and two private libraries which date back to around 1200 BC, containing diplomatic texts as well as poetry and other literary forms. In the 7th century, King Ashurbanipal of Assyria assembled what is considered the first systematically collected library at Nineveh; previous collections functioned more as passive archives.[1]

The legendary Library of Alexandria in Egypt is doubtless the best known example of an early library, flourishing in the 3rd century BC. It is also possible that the private library of Aristotle was its beginning corpus. The Library was charged with collecting all the world's knowledge, and most of the staff was occupied with the task of translating works onto papyrus paper. The library was open to any scholar. It later burned down, but scholars are not sure when and why that happened.[2]

Middle Ages [edit]

Catholic monasteries housed the major libraries in medieval Europe. Most books and manuscripts were chosen for their religious value, including versions of the Gospels and books of the Old Testament in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Coptic and Syriac, and also texts of ancient classics.[3]

Renaissance and Early Modern era [edit]

The Renaissance stimulated a strong interest in the writings of the Greeks and Romans. Old texts were copied, and copies brought in from Byzantine and Islamic sources. They formed the core of libraries sponsored by erudite nobles.[4]

1750-1900 [edit]

The role of librarian began to be professionalized starting in the late eighteenth century in Western Europe, in the face of complaints about the jumbled organization of book collections and the ignorance of the keepers. Librarians began seeking the professional goals of being more industrious and effective, with collections that were optimized to promote use and access. Innovation focused on classification and cataloguing. Librarians also explicitly valued a characteristic set of 'librarianly' virtues that included love of order and the willingness to serve.[5]

In the late nineteenth century, Black argues, libraries were at the cutting edge of the bureaucratic innovations necessary for building a modern society. Trained experts provided numerous specialized users access to massive collections of information by organizing the holdings according to a scientific classification. They developed efficient methods of information management in terms of the lending of books and the recording of user activity. New architectural designs emphasize the functionality of the library as a complex machine rather than a piece of art or memorial to the past.[6]

1900 to present [edit]

The Cold War was a contest of ideas between the West and the Communist world, so that information, news, and libraries played important role. The United States especially, and also France and Britain opened libraries in major cities across the world, often providing much better access to current information than local facilities. The goal was to operationalize freedom of information as a Western cultural and political value, and to provide up-to-date information on economic, political and cultural affairs. The Communists subsidized political newspapers and conferences but rarely opened libraries because of their embarrassing need to heavily censor most information sources. However they did make an impact by giving many scholarships for librarians to study in the USSR.[7]

Europe [edit]

France [edit]

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. Reopened in 1682, the Mazarin library has occupied the eastern wing of the Bâtiments du Collège since its inception. The Collège des Quatre-Nations became in 1805 the Palais de l’Institut de France.

By the time of the French Revolution in the 1790s, the Bibliothèque Mazarine held more than 60,000 volumes. The library came under government control and received a considerable number of books seized from the nobles or from religious congregations. Among its collection of 2370 incunabula is a specimen of the Gutenberg Bible known as the Bible Mazarine.

The National Library of France is one of the oldest libraries in the world still in service today as it traces its origin to the royal library founded at the Louvre by King Charles V in 1368, but at the time it was conceived as the private library of the French kings> It was first opened to scholars in 1692 by King Louis XIV.

Poland [edit]

Many cathedrals, monasteries and noble families maintained their own collections. The first cathedral library was started in the year 1000; the University of Kraków had a library when it opened in 1364; book printers appeared in the 1470s. Poland became the first European country to possess a true national Library, starting in 1747. By 1790 it was one of the largest anywhere, with 400,000 volumes. When Poland was partitioned in 1794, the Russians carried it away to Saint Petersburg. A new national library was established in 1928, but 80% of its collection was destroyed deliberately by the Nazis in World War II. It was rebuilt after the war and today the Biblioteka Narodowa in Warsaw holds over 4,000,000 books. also of importance is the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow, as well as the Biblioteka Polska (Polish Library) in Paris.[8]

The public libraries in Poland's major cities became centers of Cultural independence and resistance to Russian domination of Poland after 1795. Patriots valued their mission to preserve and maintain the Polish national identity in the face of Russification and the prohibition of the use of the Polish language in the schools.[9]

Russia [edit]

Czar Nicholas I inspects the National Library of Russia in 1853.

Russian book collections were originally based in the monasteries, starting in the Sophia Cathedral in Kiev in 1037. Multiple invasions and wars decimated the collections, but 1564 marked a turning point with the first printing press. Prominent nobles build their own collections, and Peter the Great fostered research libraries in St. Petersburg, such as the Library of the Academy of Sciences in 1714, and the Lomonosov Library of Moscow State University in 1754. The first National Library of Russia opened in St. Petersburg in 1795; it was based on the 300,000 volumes confiscated from Poland. In the nineteenth century there was a steady trend toward professionalization along Western lines [10][11] Some efforts were made to open library resources to the public in major cities.[12]

As former revolutionaries who well understood the power of written propaganda, the Bolsheviks when they came to power in 1917 purged the libraries of Russia. The new Communist regime destroyed books that threatened the official national ideology, and imposed a tight censorship on all new publications.[13][14][15] The same policy was followed when the Soviets took over the Baltic states in June 1940; large numbers of books were purged, including 70,000 theology books that were destroyed outright in Estonia alone.[16] Western librarians kept silent on the issue or supported the Soviets.[17]

North America [edit]

United States [edit]

Thomas Jefferson, a polymath and book collector devised a classification system which grouped books more or less by subject rather than alphabetically or by size or date of acquisition. His collection became the nucleus of the the Library of Congress when he sold 6700 books to Congress after the British burned the Congressional Library during the War of 1812.[18][19]

Especially among the Yankees of New England and their diaspora across the northern states from Boston to Rochester, Cleveland, Chicago and San Francisco, reading became a necessity and the public library was promoted along with the public school and the denominational college.[20] In many towns and small cities in the United States before 1900, local boosters operated social libraries, which were open by subscription. The middle classes patronized them, borrowed bestsellers and old classics, and came to know the other book lovers in town. These libraries became the forerunners of the public library.[21]

Chicago Public Library, 1897

As VanSlyck (1989) shows, the last years of the 19th century saw acceptance of the idea that libraries should be available to the American public free of charge. However the design of the idealized free library was at the center of a prolonged and heated debate. On one hand, wealthy philanthropists favored buildings that reinforced the paternalistic metaphor and enhanced civic pride. They wanted a grandiose showcase that created a grand vista through a double-height, alcoved bookhall with domestically-scaled reading rooms, perhaps dominated by the donor's portrait over the fireplace. Typical examples were the New York Public Library and the Chicago Public Library. Librarians considered that grand design inefficient, and too expensive to maintain.[22]

Carnegie libraries [edit]

The Carnegie library in Macomb, Illinois
Main article: Carnegie library

Andrew Carnegie, born to poverty taught himself and became a leading industrialist and philanthropist. Among his many philanthropies was the public library—he built and furnished a library if the city agreed to maintain and staff it. A total of 2,509 Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929, including some belonging to universities. 1,689 were built in the United States, 660 in Britain and Ireland, 125 in Canada, and others in Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. By 1930 half the American public libraries had been built by Carnegie.[23] James Bertram, Carnegie's chief aide from 1894 to 1914 administered the library program, issued guidelines and instituted an architectural review process.[24]

Between 1886 and 1917, Carnegie reformed both library philanthropy and library design, encouraging a closer correspondence between the two. The Carnegie buildings typically followed a standardized style called "Carnegie Classic": a rectangular, T-shaped or L-shaped structure of stone or brick, with rusticated stone foundations and low-pitched, hipped roofs, with space allocated by function and efficiency.[25]

Carnegie libraries provided permanent jobs for the graduates of newly formed library schools. He built academic libraries were built for 108 colleges. Usually there was no charge to read or borrow; in New Zealand, however, local taxes were too low to support libraries and most charged subscription fees to their users. The arrangements were always the same: Carnegie would provide the funds for the building but only after the municipal government had provided a site for the building and had passed an ordinance for the purchase of books and future maintenance of the library through taxation. This policy was in accord with Carnegie's philosophy that the dispensation of wealth for the benefit of society must never be in the form of free charity but rather must be as a buttress to the community's responsibility for its own welfare.

A combination of aversion to new taxes, fear of modernization, labor union protest against a big capitalist, and in the South a fear that Carnegie might require the city to admit black patrons to his library account for the refusal of some local governments to accept the money. Most later relented.[26]

Canada [edit]

Library of Parliament in Ottawa; it opened in 1876

In Canada small personal collections of books were brought over to the continent by French settlers and missionaries in the 16th century. The oldest library was founded at The Jesuit College in Quebec City in 1635.

Universities operated their own libraries; but by 1949 only McGill University and two others had more than 300,000 books. Rapid growth in the academic libraries came in the 1960s. The Library of Parliament, in Ottawa, has a history that traces back to 1792. It served in effect as the national library until 1953. The National Library of Canada was established in 1953, and allowed a certain degree of independence from the services of the American Library of Congress. The Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) in Montreal was established in 1968 as a quasi-national library. It was based on the collections of the defunct Bibliothèque Saint-Sulpice, which opened in 1910 and was headed by Ægidius Fauteux.[27]

Public library service is in the hands of municipalities, but they were slow to act. In 1901 Carnegie offered more than $2.5 million to build 125 libraries in Canada. Most cities at first turned him down—then relented and took the money.[28] Few rural areas had any library service until the late twentieth century.[29] The province of Quebec had few public libraries until the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s eliminated Church control over reading opportunities.[30]

Asia [edit]

China [edit]

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 and Clwyd the use of paper and block printing.[31] 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.

The American missionary impulse of the late nineteenth century included not only religious and medical motivations but educational and cultural roles as well. Mary Elizabeth Wood (1861–1931) and her American-trained Chinese students made it their mission to develop and professionalized the modern library system in China in the 1920s and 1930s. Shen Zurong (Samuel T. Y. Seng, 1884–1977) and other students became China's first library professionals and leaders. They set up China's first library school, spearheaded the establishment of public libraries in major Chinese cities, and designed a cataloguing system for Chinese characters, thereby laying the foundations for the modern Chinese library system.[32]

The Metropolitan Library of Peking opened in 1912, and served as the national library, by 1949 it had 1.4 million volumes and 120 staffers. By 1984, the National Library of China had 12,000,000 items and more than 1100 staff. The library of Beijing University was established in 1902.[33] When the communists came to power in 1949, many the Western trained librarians fled to Taiwan. China adopted the principles developed in Soviet libraries, and sharply curtailed access to materials that offended the mildest perspective. The great majority of foreign titles were scientific books in Russian.[34] Internal turmoil during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s had a devastating effect on libraries, and especially on trained professional librarians. Young militants destroyed many books and sent many librarians and scholars away to do farm labor. Since 1977, relations with the West have normalized, and the rebuilt libraries eagerly adopted Western technology and techniques.[35]

Indonesia [edit]

The Dutch colonial government of the Netherlands East Indies began a modernization program during World War I that emphasized human capital and literary skills. Between 1918 and 1926, it established 2,500 public libraries in towns and cities throughout the archipelago. The program was especially popular among local elites and the aspiring middle class. The Dutch emphasized books, magazines, and periodicals that would promote Western values and entrepreneurial skills that would grow the economic base and strengthen ties with the Netherlands.[36]

Africa [edit]

During the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union, 1947-1989, Britain, France, and the United States employed similar strategies to win over popular and elite support in Francophone Africa. information, culture, and libraries were part of the strategy. All three countries sponsored language instruction and set up cultural centers with libraries reflecting their national heritage. The Soviets, on the other hand, preferred to work with radical movements and send young students in Moscow for training. The United States Information Agency (USIA) set up its library in Dakar Senegal in 1958 with the goal of building understanding and support for the American position on international issues. Half of the books were French translations of American authors. The goal of the French cultural center library, established in 1959, was to encourage African authors writing in French to foster cultural exchange. Its entire collection was in French.[37]

See also [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ See Edwin Wiley, "Libraries, Ancient," in Encyclopedia Americans (1920)
  2. ^ Roy MacLeod, ed., The Library of Alexandria: Centre of Learning in the Ancient World (I. B. Tauris Publishers, 2000), essays by 10 scholars.
  3. ^ See Edwin Wiley, "Libraries, Medieval and renaissance," in Encyclopedia Americans (1920)
  4. ^ See Edwin Wiley, "Libraries, Medieval and renaissance," in Encyclopedia Americans (1920)
  5. ^ Catherine Minter, “Academic Library Reform and the Ideal of the Librarian in England, France, and Germany in the Long Nineteenth Century,” Library & Information History (March 2013) 29#1 pp 19-37.
  6. ^ Alistair Black, "The Victorian Information Society: Surveillance, Bureaucracy, and Public Librarianship in Nineteenth-Century Britain," Information Society (2001) 17#1 pp: 63-80.
  7. ^ Pamela Spence Richards, "Cold War Librarianship: Soviet and American Library Activities in Support of National Foreign Policy, 1946-1991," Libraries & Culture (2001) 36#1 (2001) pp 193-203
  8. ^ Wedgeworth, ALA World Encyclopedia of Library and Information Services (1986) pp 648-50
  9. ^ Ewa Dżurak, "Antecedents of the Warsaw Public Library," Library & Information History (2011) 27#1 pp 17-31
  10. ^ Wedgeworth, ALA World Encyclopedia of Library and Information Services (3rd ed. 1986) pp 818-20
  11. ^ Mary Stuart, "The evolution of librarianship in Russia: The librarians of the imperial public library, 1808-1868," Library Quarterly (1994) 64#1 pp 1-28
  12. ^ Mary Stuart, "'The Ennobling Illusion': The Public Library Movement in Late Imperial Russia," Slavonic and Eastern European Review (1998) vol 76 pp 401-40.
  13. ^ John Arch Getty; Oleg V.. Naoumov (2010). The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. Yale U.P. p. 42. 
  14. ^ Richard Pipes (2011). Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. Knopf Doubleday. p. 505. 
  15. ^ Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal; Martha Bohachevsky Chomiak (1990). A Revolution of the Spirit: Crisis of Values in Russia, 1890-1924. Fordham U.P. p. 13. 
  16. ^ Toivo U. Raun, Estonia and the Estonians (1991) p 155
  17. ^ Stephen Karetzky, Not Seeing Red: American Librarianship and the Soviet Union, 1917-1960 (2001)
  18. ^ Thomas Jefferson (2010). Thomas Jefferson's Library: A Catalog With the Entries in His Own Order. The Lawbook Exchange. 
  19. ^ James Conaway, America's library: the story of the Library of Congress, 1800-2000 (2000)
  20. ^ William J. Gilmore, Reading Becomes Necessity of Life: Material Cultural Life in Rural New England, 1780-1835 (1992)
  21. ^ Patrick M. Valentine, "America's Antebellum Social Libraries: A Reappraisal in Institutional Development," Library & Information History (2011) 27#1 pp 32-51
  22. ^ Abigail A. van Slyck, "The Utmost Amount of Effectiv [sic] Accommodation": Andrew Carnegie and the Reform of the American Library," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (1991) 50#4 pp. 359-383 in JSTOR
  23. ^ Theodore Jones, Carnegie Libraries Across America: A Public Legacy (1997)
  24. ^ Peter Mickelson, "American Society and the Public Library in the Thought of Andrew Carnegie." Journal of Library History (1975) 10#2 pp 117-138.
  25. ^ Abigail A. van Slyck, "The Utmost Amount of Effectiv [sic] Accommodation": Andrew Carnegie and the Reform of the American Library," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (1991) 50#4 pp. 359-383 in JSTOR
  26. ^ Carolyn H. Leatherman, "Richmond Considers a Free Public Library: Andrew Carnegie's Offer of 1901." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (1988) 96(2): 181-192. Issn: 0042-6636
  27. ^ Wedgeworth, ALA World Encyclopedia of Library and Information Services (1986) pp 156-158
  28. ^ Susan Goldenberg, "Dubious Donations," Beaver (2008) 88#2
  29. ^ Wedgeworth, ALA World Encyclopedia of Library and Information Services (1986) pp 160-61
  30. ^ Marcel Lajeunesse, "Public Libraries Reading in Quebec: A History of Censorship Freedom," Library & Information History (2012) 28#1 pp26-40
  31. ^ Hur-Li Lee, "Epistemic foundation of bibliographic classification in early China: A Ru classicist perspective," Journal of Documentation (2012) 68#3 pp 378-401. pool will shiftonline
  32. ^ Jing Liao, "Chinese-American Alliances: American Professionalization and the Rise of the Modern Chinese Library System in the 1920s and 1930s,' Library & Information History (2009) 25#1 pp 20-32
  33. ^ Wedgeworth, ALA World Encyclopedia of Library and Information Services (3rd ed. 1986) pp 190-91
  34. ^ Priscilla C. Yu, "Leaning to One Side: The Impact of the Cold War on Chinese Library Collections," Libraries & Culture (2001) 36#1 pp 253-266
  35. ^ Huanwen Cheng, "The Effect of the Cold War on Librarianship in China," Libraries & Culture (2001) 36#1 pp 40-50
  36. ^ Elizabeth B. Fitzpatrick, "The Public Library as Instrument of Colonialism: The Case of the Netherlands East Indies," Libraries & the Cultural Record (2008) 43#3 pp 270-285.
  37. ^ Mary Niles Maack, "Books and Libraries as Instruments of Cultural Diplomacy in Francophone Africa during the Cold War," Libraries & Culture (2001) 36#1 (2001) pp58-86

Further reading [edit]

  • Black, Alistair. A New History of the English Public Library: Social and Intellectual Contexts, 1850-1914 (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. (4th ed. 1999). History of Libraries of the Western World. 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 (1970), surveys 27 famous European libraries (and 5 American ones) in 300pp
  • Lerner, Fred. (2nd ed. 2009) The Story of Libraries: From the Invention of Writing to the Computer Age
  • Martin, Lowell A. (1998) Enrichment: A History of the Public Library in the United States in the Twentieth Century
  • Stam, David H. (2 vol 2001). International dictionary of library histories. Taylor & Francis. , 1100pp; covers 122 major libraries in Europe, 59 in U.S, and 44 others, plus 47 thematic essays
  • Wedgeworth, Robert, et al. eds. (3rd ed. 1993). World Encyclopedia of Library and Information Services. American Library Association. 
  • Wiegand, Wayne A. and Donald G. Davis, Jr. (1994). Encyclopedia of Library History.. Taylor & Francis. ; covers 60 major libraries
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