The Library: A
Catalogue of Wonders
by Stuart Kells
A Library With No Books
If a
library can be something as simple as an organized collection of texts, then
libraries massively pre-date books in the history of culture. Every country has a tradition of legends,
parables, riddles, myths and chants that existed long before they were written
down. Warehoused as memories, these
texts passed from generation to generation through dance, gesture and word of
mouth….
Cultures
that lacked any form of writing could only ever preserve their texts
imperfectly. Those cultures, though,
adopted elaborate techniques (such as intricate patterns of repetition) and
rules (such as social obligations and taboos) to maintain, as best they could,
the integrity of their texts.
Ancient Books and Their Storage
First
came oral libraries, then collections of physical books. The roots of the words
“library” and “book” derive from different languages – liber is from Latin,
while bece, buc, and boc are from the cluster of Germanic
languages that includes Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Old Norse, and Old
English. Both roots, though, have
similar meanings: liber is bark, bece beech wood. Both roots, though, have similar
meanings: liber is bark, bece beech
wood. Both etymologies relate to forest
materials for book-making. The meaning
of these roots is important. As soon as people began writing things down, the
properties and availability of book-making materials became intertwined with
the history of books and libraries…
In
the making of books, local availability long dictated what materials would be
used, and to what extent; local abundance enabled abundant use. The banks of
the Tigris and the Euphrates were heavy with clay, so Mesopotamian scribes
naturally used it to make their books.
In the Nile Valley, however, clay was scarce – the very first Egyptian
tablets were made from bone and ivory.
Later Egyptian books, in scroll format, used the plentiful pith of the
Nile papyrus. In China, long before
Europe, paper was in large quantities from the abundant bamboo and the
by-products of everyday life….
Greatest Scroll Library
The
greatest scroll library in all history was assembled downstream from the main
source of papyrus. A port city in
northern Egypt, Alexandria was a key capital in the Hellenic empire established
by Alexander the Great and his generals.
Around 300 B.C., the Greek-speaking Ptolemaic dynasty founded the Great
Library of Alexandria inside the fortified walls of the royal palace, on a spit
of land between an intertidal lake and the man-made port at Pharos. The library’s bibliothekai or bookshelves
were probably set in recesses along a wide covered passageway. The precise layout of the collections is
uncertain, but the Italian classicist and historian Luciano Canfora surmised,
“Every niche or recess must have been dedicated to a certain class of authors,
each marked with an appropriate heading.”
Above the bibliothekai was an inscription: “The place of the cure of the soul.’
Library of Alexandria
The
library adopted an admirably inclusive and international ambition: to assemble books from all the known countries
and in all the languages. During the
third century B.C., Ptolemy III sent messages kings, lords, and rajas asking
for books to copy. While in reality most
of the texts obtained by the library were Greek, it did succeed in gathering
substantial numbers of books from India, the Near and Middle East, and
elsewhere in the Alexandrine world – books that represented a multitude of
philosophies and creeds.
At
its peak, Alexandria’s library held hundreds of thousands of scrolls. Some accounts have put the number at half a
million, others 1 million, plus another 40,000 in a building attached to the
Temple of Serapis, in the old Egyptian quarter of Rhakotis…
Many
different stories have been told about how the library came to an end. Perhaps an accidental blaze destroyed it in
47 B.C. Perhaps it was a casualty of a
first-century pagan revolt against Alexandria’s Christianization. Or perhaps Roman Emperor Aurelian’s troops
destroyed it in 273 A.D. when they set fire to Alexandria’s royal quarter.
An
altogether different school of thought is that, long before Omar, the
manuscripts had simply worn out. Papyrus
is a terrible material for preserving texts.
Without a large and unwavering commitment to conservation and copying, a
library of papyrus scrolls will readily and unceremoniously disintegrate –
especially in the damp conditions of a river delta. Alexandria’s library might have just faded
away.
Changing Library
For
almost 1,000 years, Europe’s libraries held almost nothing but Bibles,
church-sanctioned religious tracts, and selected classical works of science and
philosophy that were accessible only to a privileged class. A typical Christian monastery possessed fewer
than one hundred books. Not until the
end of the Middle Ages were monastic libraries likely to have more than two or
three hundred.
Library Growth
Libraries
grow according to their own version of Moore’s Law. Don Tolzman estimated that
America’s major libraries were doubling in size every twenty years from the
1870s to the 1940s, and every fifteen years after that. Globally, the British Library was the first
collection to surpass 100 million items.
The Library of Congress was not far behind. As early as the seventeenth century, people
worried about the rate at which books were proliferating. Leibniz remarked, “if the world goes on this
way for a thousand years and as many books are written as today, I’m afraid
whole cities will be made up libraries.”
Noticing the explosion of printed titles, Thomas Coryat observed,
“methinks we want rather readers for books than books for readers.”
Nature
The
very first libraries had problems with worms:
Over
millennia, the animal kingdom of book botherers has included termites, mud
wasps, snakes, skunks, foxes, cockroaches, and silverfish.
When Disaster Strikes
Something
similar happened in 1968 at Northwestern University. A heavy, freestanding section of empty
shelving fell against shelves that were full of books. John Camp and Carl Eckelman reported on the
incident in their technical paper on library book stacks: “a domino effect toppled twenty-seven ranges,
spilling 264,000 volumes, splintering solid oak chairs, flattening steel
footstools, shearing books in half, destroying or damaging more than 8,000
volumes.”
The Beginning
Between
250,000 and 100,000 years ago, humans began to speak. About 5,000 years ago – after the
domestication of horses, the cultivation of chili, the brewing of beer, the
hoisting of sails, and the spinning of clay – humans began to write.
Digitization
Suppose
a library decides to dispose of much of its paper texts, relying instead on
microfilm and digital copies, on the grounds that originals are held
elsewhere. And suppose, too, that other
libraries make the same judgment.
Much
more than accumulations of books, the best libraries are hotspots and organs of
civilization; magical places in which students, scholars, curators,
philanthropists, artists, pranksters, and flirts come together and make
something marvelous.
The
digitization of bibliographical treasure is a valuable means through which rare
books and manuscripts can be discovered, studied, appreciated, and enjoyed. Digitization, combined with online
publication, gives easy access to texts from anywhere in the world. Ease of access to rare materials is a boon,
as is ease of discoverability.
Digitization is also a technique of conservation. The case for digitizing early and precious
materials is obvious, particularly for especially delicate books that cannot be
handled without endangering them.
Something
else is lost, too, in the experience of digital browsing. Browsing books on a screen is utterly alien
to the delight of browsing and getting lost in a physical, fractal,
serendipitous library of real books.
This book has walked through many different species of the wonder of
libraries: secret, hidden spaces;
marvelous chance discoveries; high art in paint, stucco, timber, and stone; and
every aspect of the human drama, from triumph to despair. The physicality of books in libraries –
spines, fore-edges, verticality, shelf-marks, bookcases, stacks, stalls, halls,
domes – all these may be read so what we may know the histories of the books
and the libraries; when and how they were made, how they were used and
appreciated. In the case of digital
texts and digital libraries, such a mode of reading is impossible or
irrelevant.
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