History Of Libraries

History of libraries

The history of the library began with the first effort to organize a collection of documents (recorded knowledge), which happened probably around 1200 BCE. 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.

Ancient history
At Ugarit in Syria excavations have revealed a palace library, temple library, and two private libraries which date back to around 1200 BCE, 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.

The legendary Library of Alexandria in Egypt is doubtless the best known example of an early library, flourishing in the 3rd century BCE. 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.

Middle Age
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.

Renaissance and Early Modern era
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.

1750-1900
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.

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.

1900 to present
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.