The Library: An Illustrated History Stuart A. P. Murray

1. The Library: An Illustrated HistoryStuart A. P. Murray Presentation by Jennifer Ureste, Carl Solorio, and Nicky Fairless

2. Forward and Introduction • In the Forward, Nicholas A. Basbanes talks about the importance of libraries and how attendance goes up during times of stress: war, recessions, and depressions, etc. • In the Introduction, Donald G. Davis, Jr. discusses how libraries were used throughout the ages to preserve knowledge and to inform and enlighten future leaders. Libraries are a “collective memory of the human race.” He states, “libraries remind us of our humanity, preserve our legacy as a species, and provide the intellectual building blocks for the future” (X).

3. 5,000 years ago, libraries began here:

4. Ebla Library

5. Ebla Library Details • The Elba library is the earliest known library dating back to 2,500 BCE. • It contained 20,000 clay tablets with cuneiform writing. • The tablets were arranged on shelves. The tablets were found “in horizontal heaps, like cards in a file” (9). • Tablets found there contain the earliest references to the city of Jerusalem.

6. Ancient Egyptians and Papyrus • Ancient Egyptians used papyrus instead of clay tablets. • They were stored rolled up in wooden boxes, chests, and boxes in the shape of statues, as well as piled on shelves. Some were also stored in large clay vessels. • They were organized or grouped according to subject or author. • They were also labeled by using thin pieces of clay and attached with a string to the end of the scroll. • Because papyrus was almost exclusive to Egypt, ancient Egyptians controlled its distribution. This influenced the development of books and writing in the civilized world.

7. Examples of scrolls

8. Nineveh Library • Nineveh Library was the royal library of the Assyrian King Assurbanipal. The library was located in his palace. • It existed in the 7th century BCE. • It is considered the first catalogued library. • It contained over 30,000 clay tablets, written in several languages, and broken up into 9 different rooms according to their category: “government records, historical chronicles, poetry, science, mythological and medical texts, royal decrees and grants, divinations, omens, and hymns to the gods” (6). • Assurbanipal sent out scribes to other libraries to record their contents. These were among the first library catalogs.

9. Nineveh Library • He also organized the copying of original literary works because “…he sought to study the “artistic script of the Sumerians” and the “obscure script of the Akkadians” (9). • Nineveh Library held the Epic of Gilgamesh. • After his death in 627 BCE, the Assyrian Empire weakened and by 612 BCE, Nineveh was ransacked and a fire raged through the library.

10. Bas-relief from Nineveh Library

11. Clay tablets found in Assurbanipal’s Palace

12. Alexandria Library • The Alexandria Library was named after Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE). • When he conquered lands, it almost always meant the destruction of major libraries. • After his death, Ptolemy I Soter, assumed kingship of Egypt and founded the Great Library, in 300 BCE. • The Great Library at Alexandria acquired the largest holdings of the age, estimates range from 40,000 to 400,000 scrolls. • Scrolls were laboriously copied from all over the known world. Sometimes originals were kept and copies were sent back to the libraries that originally loaned the materials to copy.

13. Alexandria Library • Despite legends, the Great Library, and several other libraries in Alexandria, were around for 700 years and suffered many fires and conquests. • For seven centuries, the city of Alexandria was known as the world’s repository for learning and wisdom. • Over the centuries, damage to the Great Library occurred through fires (one notable fire was started by Julius Caesar’s army who destroyed thousands of scrolls), and earthquakes. • “The Alexandrian book collections steadily diminished as a result of natural causes, war, and wholesale theft by corrupt administrators” (17).

14. The Roman Empire • Between the first century BCE to the fourth century, Romans established libraries throughout the known world. • Roman libraries contained books in Latin and Greek. • Libraries were constructed as temples and separate rooms were required for Greek and Latin works. • As Christianity blossomed in Rome, many Roman book collections were destroyed as unholy, pagan teachings. • New libraries popped up in churches and monasteries where many of the pagan books were saved and stored away from public view. • The art of illumination was advanced during this time. • Bookbinding techniques advanced to vellum bound pages, written on both sides. • Calligraphy and art design sprouted up during this time.

15. European Libraries of the Middle Ages • “Public” libraries began during the Roman Empire. • After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, Europe entered into the Dark Ages. It would last for 300 years. • In the 5th century, while the Roman Empire of the West was fading, the libraries in Constantinople were gathering classical Greek and Roman works. • The Byzantine libraries were able to protect these works from invaders and Christians hostile towards pagans. • During the Dark Ages, monasteries continued to labor with copying manuscripts and books for preservation.

16. Codex Format • From the 4th century on, scrolls were no longer used. The preferred type of book was a codex. • The codex was invented by the Romans who folded scrolls into pages. It was thought that Julius Caesar was the first to fold scrolls. • A codex looks like modern books with its pages or leaves bound together on one side, writing on both sides of the vellum, and bound with protective covers made of wood enclosed with leather. • The word “codex” refers to handwritten manuscripts only.

17. Example of a codex

18. The Rule of Monks • A major fire broke out in Constantinople in 476 destroying the imperial library. • Monasteries and churches became the leaders in collecting and copying old books. • The Rule of Monks was a guidebook started by the Order of Saint Benedict. One of its principles required that each monastery have at least one book for every brother. • They also worked as scribes who translated and laboriously copied books. • The Benedictine scriptoria was the most productive entity of the Middle Ages in turning out books and manuscripts.

19. Monastic Scriptoria • Monks and lay brothers worked as copyists and bookbinders. • Specialists were employed to illuminate the pages with elaborate capital letters, designs, and pictures. • The average scribe copied two books a year. • Candles were generally forbidden. They did their copying by windows. • Copying the Bible took fifteen months. • Scribes often left comments when they finished copying a manuscript: “I have made an end at last, and my weary hand can rest” (38).

20. The Book of Kells Example of Dutch Illumination Examples of Illuminated Books

21. Book Curses • Book curses date back to the beginnings of libraries. • “Ancient librarians called down the wrath of the gods of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome upon book thieves and vandals” (39). • In Europe, many curses were built around expulsion from the church and eternal damnation. • Other curses wanted the perpetrator to be hanged. • They took their books seriously!

22. Examples of book curses • “He who entrusts this book to others’ hands, may all the gods who are found in Babylon curse him” (40)! • “Steal not this book my honest friend, for fear of the gallows should be your end, and when you die the Lord will say, and where’s the book you stole away” (41)? • “Him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying out for mercy, and let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails and let the flames of Hell consume him forever” (40).

23. Asia and Islam • Paper was invented in the 2nd century in China. • The Chinese would do rubbings on Confucius stone tablets with paper, making “prints”. • By the 8th century, block printing was widely used in China. • Block printing consisted of carved wood blocks with characters in relief and inked. Then paper was applied to the block and rubbed with a brush. • “In the 10th century a major Buddhist canon, the Tripitaka, was published in 5,000 volumes using more than 130,000 individual woodblocks” (45). • China developed “movable type” in the 11th century. It consisted of single letters or characters placed alongside others in a frame.

24. Movable Type Examples of individual blocks A Chinese printed book • Brass and ceramic blocks • Movable type

25. Caves of the Thousand Buddhas • The Caves of the Thousand Buddhas was discovered in the early 20th century in western China. • The “caves form a complex of almost 500 temples, with half a million square feet of religious wall murals. The complex contained more than 15,000 paper books and 1,100 paper bundles, each of which held dozens of scrolls” (49). • It was sealed in the 11th century. • “Found in the caves were books from the Fertile Crescent, including a version of the Old Testament written in Hebrew…Tibetan scrolls…Buddhist texts, written in Sanskrit….the world’s oldest-known printed book, dating from the ninth century…” (49).

26. Islamic Libraries • Papermaking came to Islam in the 8th century. Muslims were responsible for bringing papermaking to India and Europe. • Calligraphy flourished. • By the 10th century, the library at Cordoba, Spain held between 400,000 – 600,000 books. • The Crusades, during the 11th – 13th centuries, were responsible for widespread destruction of Islamic libraries and many books were lost to burning.

27. Late Middle Ages • Papermaking came to Europe during this time. • Paper was originally called bagdatikos, which means “from Baghdad”. • Paper revolutionized the book business. • Books cost less to make, making them more accessible to people. • European scribes switched from large print to small print to fit more words on a page. • Libraries benefited the most by the increase in production of less costly books.

28. Europe’s High Middle Ages • Encompassed the 11th – 13th centuries. • Monarchies and cities came into prominence. • Colleges and universities started during this time. • Wealthy patrons contributed books to the university libraries. • Book collectors moved from considering collections as tokens of power to having love for books and knowledge. • “Humanism” came into prominence. • Books were protected by chains in libraries.

29. Beowulf • Beowulf was written down by a monk in the 13th century.

30. Canterbury Tales • By the 14th century, books like the Canterbury Tales, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and poetry about King Arthur and his knights thrilled readers.

31. Humanism brought about the Renaissance • “Humanism” started when scholars sought to understand the nature of human beings. • Humanism-inspired education consisted of languages, sciences, philosophy, and history. • In 1450, Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press. • It changed the landscape of books and libraries. • Gutenberg made individual letters that could be assembled into words and put into a frame to make identical pages.

32. Gutenberg, his printing press, and his Bible

33. Renaissance • “Rebirth” • Free thinking was a hallmark of the age • Many libraries had many writers and philosophers • Academies or associations of scholars were formed • Academies were dedicated to higher learning and philosophy

34. Cataloging in the Renaissance • Each library was categorized according to the individual in charge • Sorbonne library • Conrad Gesner - “Father of Bibliography” • Librarians revised catalogs regularly

35. Renaissance Librarianship • The catalog listed, described, and classified books. • Libraries organized according to knowledge of librarians. • Books could be arranged by language, printed, or handwritten. • Books arranged according to law, Scriptures, and philosophy, to name a few.

36. Matthias Corvinus • Corvinus built a library of 3000 titles in the city of Buda.

37. Court Libraries • Bibliophiles built libraries as temples to books and knowledge. • Libraries appeared as manifestations of immense wealth. • Libraries were used as courts for aristocrats and the Church. • Court libraries were housed in monumental buildings with woodwork. • Court libraries were built in Naples, Modena, and Cesna. • Court libraries were adorned with statues, paintings, and frescoes.

38. France’s Charles V • The Royal library became the cornerstone of National Bibliotheque in France.

39. Phillip II of Spain • Phillip II founded El Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial.

40. Thought vs. Religion • Beliefs of academics put them at odds with the Church. • Religious leaders became angry when academic members appeared to favor classical culture and pre-Christian pagan ideas.

41. Martin Luther • Luther started the Protestant Reformation.

42. People of the Book • Islamic armies brought books and libraries • Founded centers of scholarship and libraries • Migration led to establishment of libraries in other lands • Libraries developed in towns and trading centers

43. Timbuktu

44. City of mud brick buildings • Great Mosque of cut stone • Books were a valuable commodity • Families had more than 100,000 manuscripts • Manuscripts were the source of religion, science, and music • Conquered and the scholarly were persecuted • Families managed to preserve their private collections and would become a cultural treasure

45. South Asia - Islam • War over faith • Scholars shared knowledge in times of peace • Many ideas and forms of worship converged and held similar principles

46. Delhi Sultanate • Developed several types of libraries which were open for public use

47. Safavid Dynasty • Created libraries • Delhi Sultans established libraries • Ottoman Turks rose and established libraries • Library growth was spurred by waqf

48. China, Korea, and Japan • Imperial library in Beijing grew in the Yuan and Ming dynasties. • Private libraries and academy libraries flourished. • Government employed scholars to compile encyclopedias. • K’angHsi developed the Imperial Library. • Libraries belonged to royalty and Buddhist temples. • Royal Libraries categorized by titles, such as, classics, history, encyclopedias, and philosophy. • Samurai had libraries on military strategy. • Family libraries include the classics.

49. Golden Age Librarianship • Employed scholarly directors who classified and organized information • Task of cataloging lagged • Characteristic was compulsiveness and knowledgeable on objects

50. Francis Trigge Chained Library • First public library • Books fastened by chains • Books donated by military • Town libraries