September 16, 2007

Assurbanipal’s library at Nineveh was the largest and most important collection of tablets of encyclopaedic, literary and scientific interest that the world had ever seen.

THEY say if you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. Libraries are sanctuaries for researchers, students and people who choose not to or cannot afford to purchase an extensive collection themselves.

Libraries such as the New York Public Library in New York City, the Russian National Library in St Petersburg, the British Library in London, Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris or the Library of Congress in Washington, DC provide people with access to immeasurable amounts of information and literature. Modern libraries are increasingly being redefined as places to get unrestricted access to information in many formats and from many sources. In addition to providing reading materials, they also provide the services of specialists who are experts in matters related to finding and organising information and interpreting information needs. Many libraries serve as repositories and access points for maps, prints or other documents and artworks on various storage media and provide public facilities to access CD-ROM, subscription databases and the internet.

But libraries were not always this handy or so convenient. The first libraries were only partly libraries, being composed for the most part of unpublished records, which are generally viewed as archives, not libraries. The first people to set aside special areas for stockpiling and classifying written materials in order to assist the better functioning of various social groups were the Sumerians. Using the ancient cuneiform script engraved on tablets made of clay, they recorded texts reflecting their daily activities.

The Royal Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was once the largest library in the world. It is generally thought to have been set up at the beginning of the third century BC, during the reign of Ptolemy II. The library was likely created after his father had built what would become the initial part of the library complex, the famous temple of the Muses, from which the modern English word museum is derived.

Private libraries comprising both fiction and non-fiction books first appeared in ancient Greece circa fifth century BC. Pisistratus, the tyrant of Athens, Euclides who was himself also an Athenian, Euripides the poet, Aristotle the philosopher and Nelius his librarian are among the celebrated book collectors of Hellenistic antiquity.

Little is known about early Chinese libraries apart from what has been written about the imperial library which began with the Qin dynasty. One of the curators of the imperial library in the Han dynasty is believed to have been the first to establish a library classification system and the very first book notation system. In this era the library catalogue was written on fine silk scrolls and stored in silk bags. There is also evidence of such libraries at Nippur (circa 900 BC) and at Nineveh (circa 700 BC) showing a library classification system.

Assurbanipal’s library at Nineveh, founded by the Greek ruler Assurbanipal between 669-631 BC was the largest and most important collection of tablets of encyclopaedic, literary and scientific interest that the world had ever seen. It contained over 25,000 tablets classified in two sections: the first contained letters, diplomatic documents, financial contracts and registers, and the second held literary, historical, religious and astrological works.

The Zoroastrian kings and elite established many libraries in Persia. Among the first ones was a royal library in Isfahan. One of the most important public libraries was established around 667 AD in Gundishapur in south-western Iran. It was part of a bigger scientific complex located at the Academy of Gundishapur.

In the West, the first public libraries were established under the Roman Empire as each succeeding emperor endeavoured to create a library which outshone the one established by his predecessor. Unlike Greek libraries, readers had direct access to the scrolls which were kept on shelves built into the walls of a sizeable room. Reading or copying was normally done in the room itself. As a rule, Roman public libraries were bilingual and had separate Latin and Greek rooms. In the sixth century, at the very close of the Classical period, the greatest libraries of the Mediterranean world remained those of Constantinople and Alexandria.

Elsewhere in the early Middle Ages, after the fall of the western Roman Empire and before the rise of large libraries in Christian monasteriesin the West, large collections of books were discovered in scattered places in the Christian Middle East.

Upon the rise of Islam, libraries in newly Islamic lands enjoyed a brief period of development in the Middle East, Sicily, North Africa and Spain. Like Christian libraries, they mostly comprised of books which were made of paper and appeared in a codex or modern form instead of scrolls. Libraries could be found in mosques, private homes and at universities.

By the 8th century first the Persinas and then Arabs had imported the craft of paper-making from China, with a mill already at work in Baghdad in 794. By the 9th century public libraries started to appear in many Islamic cities. They were called ‘halls of science’ or Dar al-’Ilm.

The design of medieval libraries reflects the fact that the manuscripts created via the labour-intensive process of hand copying were valuable possessions. Library architecture developed in response to the need for security. Librarians often chained books to wooden chests, or shelves, in well-lit rooms. Despite this protectiveness, many libraries were willing to lend their books if provided with security deposits — usually money or a book of equal value. Monastic libraries lent and borrowed books from each other frequently and the lending policy was often theologically grounded.

As books became more common, the need for chaining them lessened. But as the number of books in libraries increased, so did the need for compact storage and access with adequate lighting. This gave birth to the stack system which involved keeping a library’s collection of books in a space separate from the reading room, an arrangement which arose in the 19th century. Book stacks quickly evolved into a fairly standard form in which the cast iron and steel frameworks supporting the bookshelves also supported the floors, which often were built of translucent blocks to permit the passage of light but were not transparent, for reasons of modesty.

The library has evolved a great deal since ancient times. More recently, libraries have extended beyond the physical walls of a building by making material accessible by electronic means, and by providing the assistance of librarians in navigating and analysing tremendous amounts of knowledge with a variety of digital tools.