Libraries

collections of printed or written literature. The earliest writings of which we have any knowledge were either religious or political. Temples sheltered the first libraries, and priests were the first librarians. Next in importance are state papers, collections of which are known as archives. In 1850 Layard, the celebrated antiquarian, came upon some chambers in the royal palace at Nineveh, the floors of which were littered with tablets of clay, covered with cuneiform inscriptions, some of them so minute that a magnifying glass was required to read them. Investigation showed that they had fallen evidently from shelves of an upper story, and that Layard had come upon the royal library. There is evidence that this library, if we may so call it, was catalogued and methodically arranged, and that it was open to the learned public for consultation. There appear to have been about 10,000 distinct works. Large numbers of the tablets, most of them in fragments, have been removed to the British Museum. At the present rate of progress a century will be required to read them all.

The literature of ancient Egypt was written in hieroglyphics on papyrus. Lepsius, an authority on Egyptian subjects, estimates that writings of this sort amounted to 36,525 books. Rameses I, whose library was arranged in a palace temple near Thebes, called his collection "the dispensary of the soul." Unfortunately the Egyptian collections have fared little better than those of the Assyrians.

Of Greek libraries little can be said. Their public buildings were built of short blocks of marble. They have not stood well. Plato is known to have had a library. Aristotle bequeathed a collection of volumes to one of his disciples. The libraries of Greece were carried away very generally by conquerors and little is known of them.

The most celebrated libraries of antiquity were those of Alexandria, Egypt. They were parchment and papyrus manuscripts, written chiefly in the Greek character. They were collected by Greek scholars during the reign of the Ptolemies, Greek rulers of Egypt. They formed practically a university library. According to the statements of their librarians, one of them contained 42,800. volumes or rolls, the other 490,000. The larger collection caught fire accidentally and was burned when Caesar set fire to the Egyptian fleet in the harbor of Alexandria. The fate of the other is not well established. According to one account, it was still in fair condition when the Arabs took the city in 640 A. D. The story runs that the Saracen commander ordered that it be destroyed on the score that if the writings agreed with the Koran, they were superfluous, and that if they did not agree, they should be burned. According to this story, the rolls were used to heat the baths of the city. This account is not considered credible, however. It is probable that there were very few books, if any, left at this date.

The early Romans were not noted for literature or libraries. Their first collections were Greek manuscripts brought home as the spoils of war from the east. Toward the close of the republic we read of libraries formed by wealthy men. They were placed in charge of learned Greek slaves. The literary men of Rome were wont to sneer at the illiteracy of wealthy owners on whom they were dependent for library privileges. One of these collections is said to have contained 30,000 volumes; another twice that number. A library of 1,756 manuscripts was found in a richly furnished room in the excavations at Herculaneum. They were well arranged on shelves. Under the empire no less than twenty-eight public libraries were established in Rome. Constantine and his successors built up a library of 100,000 volumes at Constantinople.

After the downfall of the Roman Empire the monks were almost alone in cherishing learning. As early as the sixth and seventh centuries there were considerable collections in the monasteries of Ireland and at Canterbury, York, Whitby, Durham, and elsewhere. The library of the Venerable Bede at Jarrow was resorted to by young priests. Alcuin at Tours was noted as a librarian. Among rulers of the Middle Ages, Charlemagne and Alfred were noted, not only as collectors of volumes for their own libraries, but as affording encouragement to the monastic librarians. A list of libraries would simply be a list of the monasteries of the period.

As soon as the Arabians had extended the religion of Mahomet and secured their conquests they became patrons of learning. They built up large libraries at Bagdad in the East and at Cordova in Spain. Cairo and Tripoli had large collections. There are said to have been no less than seventy Arabic libraries in Spain. During the fifteenth century a revival of learning took place. Wealthy merchants and princes began again to vie with each other in the collection of books. Charles V and the Medici family deserve mention in this connection. Matthius, king of Hungary, is said to have amassed 50,000 beautifully bound manuscripts which fell into the hands of the Turks on the fall of Buda in 1527. A few of them are still preserved in the libraries of Europe.

Of English libraries that of the British Museum easily takes the lead. It contains not less than 1,900,000 printed books and 100,000 manuscripts and charters. The Bodleian Library at Oxford is credited with 570,000 volumes and 30,000 manuscripts. Cambridge University has 500,000 books and about 6,500 manuscripts. The Law Library at Edinburgh has 350,000 books. The Scottish universities have over 100,000 volumes each. Trinity College, Dublin, has 240,000 books. The large cities of Great Britain have public libraries ranging from 100,000 volumes upward.

The largest library on the continent, in fact, the largest in the world, is the national library at Paris of about 2,600,000 printed books and 103,000 manuscripts. The Royal Library at Munich has 1,000,-000 books and 40,000 manuscripts. It may be said in passing that in Europe a royal or imperial library means the same as a national or public library in a republic. Other libraries are those at Berlin, 1,000,000 books, 30,000 manuscripts; St. Petersburg, 1,100,000 volumes, 28,000 manuscripts; Strasburg University, 760,000 volumes; the imperial library and the university at Vienna, 500,000 each; Gottingen, half a million; Leipsic University, 500,000; Copenhagen, 500,000; Stockholm, 280,000; Upsala, 300,000; Madrid, 500,000; Brussels, 375,000; Stuttgart, 432,000; Vatican Library at Rome, 200,000; Bologna, 255,-000; Florence, 450,000; Genoa, 120,000; Milan, 170,000; Parma, 200,000; Naples, 357,000; St. Mark's at Venice, 403,000. There are also other libraries at Rome aggregating 1,000,000 volumes.

The earliest library in the United States was that of Harvard College, founded in 1638. The libraries of Yale and of William and Mary were founded in 1700. Franklin took a hand in founding the Philadelphia library in 1731; Charleston, South Carolina, established a library in 1748. The Boston Athenaeum dates from 1804. The earliest free public circulating library in the world is said to have been established by vote at Peterborough, New Hampshire, in 1833. Large libraries are now the rule in the cities of the United States. The various institutions of learning are building up libraries as rapidly as funds permit. The largest collection of American books is that of the Congressional Library at Washington. In order to obtain copyright, authors are required to deposit duplicates here. According to the Librarian's report, there were on hand at the beginning of 1910, 1,702,684 books, 410,352 pieces of music, 183,724 prints, and 82,744 maps and charts.

The management of libraries has become a regular calling. Trained librarians are employed not only to select and purchase, but to oversee cataloging, supervise reading rooms, and regulate the issuing of books to the borrowing public. An association of the trained librarians on this side of the Atlantic is known as the American Library Association. Andrew Carnegie placed the income from $100,000 at the disposal of the A. L. A., as it is called, to be employed in the compilation and publication of aids to library management. One of the most notable of these publications is the A. L. A. Catalog. It was prepared and compiled for the World's Fair at Chicago by Mr. Melville Dewey. This eminent librarian enlisted the services of many experts in the compilation of a list of 8,000 volumes chosen to represent all departments of learning. This catalog has served as a guide in the purchase of books by small libraries, and it has proved valuable as a finding list for patrons. Its pages serve as a manual of instruction in the art of cataloging by the expansive decimal system and also by the dictionary method. Periodical supplements keep this valuable catalog up-to-date.

Another bit of cooperation significant of the progress made by American libraries is the wide adoption of catalog cards of uniform character and dimensions. The Library of Congress undertakes to print for each book enough cards to go around. Librarians may give standing orders for the cards required for novels and books of certain classes. The cards are sent out at actual cost-a mere fraction of what it would cost the separate libraries to print individually. As new books arrive the librarian slips the new cards into place, thus keeping his card catalog up to date. The catalog cards are furnished to more than a thousand other libraries, both at home and abroad, and have attained a yearly circulation of about four million cards. A method of exchange is in operation whereby a collective or union public library catalog is being formed, to indicate the contents of all the great libraries of the country. Good work, too, is being done in the drawing up of library rules and regulations, the Washington code being already adopted by the Library Association of England.

Library statistics have been taken by the National Bureau of Education. A careful canvass was made in 1900 and another in 1903. In the year first named there were 5,383 public libraries containing 44,591,851 volumes, being one library per 14,118 inhabitants and 59 volumes for each inhabitant. In 1903 the number of libraries had grown to 6,869, containing 54,419,002 volumes, or one library for each 11,632 inhabitants and 68 volumes for each inhabitant.

Classified according to the number of library books per inhabitant, California, Nevada, the New England States, and New York compose the first rank; New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, and Colorado are in second rank; Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Washington, and Oregon form the third rank; the states south of the Ohio River, Virginia excepted, North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho, Arizona, and New Mexico belong to the fourth rank; Texas and Oklahoma to the last and fifth rank. No doubt the next taking of statistics will show changes in this classification. Statistics of circulation for the same year, 1903, testify that twenty-two public branches circulate over 300,000 volumes yearly. They were:

See Alexandrian Library; British Museum; Book; Papyrus; Library Of Congress; Copyright, etc.