Libraries have long become a familiar and ordinary thing in our lives. This is a place where you can not only take the right book or use electronic materials. The forms of work of a modern library are very diverse, it is not only a repository of books, it is also a place for meetings, various events and actions.
One of the latest library campaigns is the International Network Action "Library Night", an annual large-scale nationwide event in support of reading. On this night, libraries, museums, galleries, bookstores, art spaces and clubs across the country open their doors to visitors outside of normal business hours.
The emergence of libraries as repositories of written monuments dates back to the 3rd millennium BC.
The word "library" first appeared in Greece.
The first libraries appeared in the Ancient East. The oldest library in the world is the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (7th century BC) in Nineveh - this is a collection of cuneiform tablets from the king's palace. The library was rediscovered in the middle of the 19th century, which was of great importance for understanding the cultures of Mesopotamia and for deciphering cuneiform writing. The remains of the Nineveh Library (about 20 thousand tablets) are kept in London in the British Museum.
In addition to the clay cuneiform book in the East, there was another deeply developed writing system - Egyptian.
Papyrus, invented in Egypt, became the main writing material of antiquity, it was the most convenient at that time. The word "papyrus" began to mean paper in many European languages (German - papier, French - papier, English - paper).
A letter, a book were highly revered in Egypt, libraries were considered the focus of wisdom. The Egyptians had a god of the moon and wisdom - Thoth, who also patronized scribes; the goddess Seshat was the patroness of libraries; god of knowledge Sia.
Historians believe that in Ancient Egypt the position of librarian, like many other public offices, was hereditary and very honorable.
The book depository of Pharaoh Ramses II, founded in 1300 BC, is known. near the capital of Egypt - Thebes. On the portal of the library was written "Pharmacy for the soul." The doors and walls of the library depicted gods patronizing writing, knowledge, and libraries.
The library of the great vizier of Persia Abdul Kassim Ismail (X century AD) always and everywhere followed him - four hundred camels transported 117 thousand book volumes arranged in alphabetical order.
One of the most famous ancient libraries is Alexandria. It was founded at the beginning of the III century BC and was the center of education and science. There were about 750,000 scrolls in its funds. The library of Aristotle in Athens was taken as a model for the Library of Alexandria. Some researchers believe that the Library of Alexandria included the library of Aristotle, bought by Ptolemy I.
The Library of Alexandria was part of the Mouseion (Temple of the Muses), a center of science and culture. In addition to the library, it included an astronomical observatory, a zoological and botanical gardens, and auditoriums. More than one and a half thousand years ago, the library was destroyed.
The opening of the new Library of Alexandria took place on April 23, 2002. The initiative of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture to recreate the Library of Alexandria was supported by UNESCO and the governments of many countries around the world.
The second library of classical antiquity in terms of quantity and value of the fund was the Pergamon Library. Its fund consisted of manuscripts of different content. Most of all there were treatises on medicine, since Pergamum was considered the center of medical science in the ancient world.
A version of parchment production is associated with the Pergamon Library. When Ptolemy II, fearing that the Library of Pergamon might surpass that of Alexandria, banned the export of papyrus to Pergamum, Pergamum scholars found a substitute for papyrus - parchment?.
It is believed that the Pergamon Library ended its existence in 31 BC. e., when Mark Antony gave the Egyptian queen Cleopatra most of the treasures of the Pergamon Library. Although the Pergamians tried to restore the library, they could not achieve its former grandeur.
The first Roman public library was founded in 39 BC. e. commander, orator, historian Gaius Assinius Pollio, five years after the death of Caesar, who, in fact, owned the idea of creating a public library in ancient Rome.
The first public library of the Middle Ages was the Constantinople Public Library, founded by Constantius II.
The first attempt of a bibliographic description of the collection in the Middle Ages was made in Byzantium. One of the most educated Byzantines of the 9th century, Patriarch Photius, wrote the work “Miriobiblion”, which means “Thousand Books”. It was a description of more than 300 books - ancient and Christian summary books and information about the author.
The prototypes of special libraries appeared in the Arab Caliphate, the so-called "affiliated libraries" were created at any institutions - mosques, mausoleums, hospitals. The collections of affiliated libraries were usually profiled, and the profile depended on the specialization of the institution to which it was affiliated.
The very first library in Russia was created by Yaroslav the Wise in Kyiv in St. Sophia Cathedral in 1037.
In Europe in the Middle Ages, libraries existed mainly at the courts of kings and in monasteries.
Scriptoria (workshops for copying manuscripts) operated in the monasteries. Having libraries, scriptoria, schools, monasteries in the early Middle Ages naturally became centers of culture and religious education, but at the turn of the 12th-13th centuries the situation changed and librarianship fell into decline, even accumulated in the previous era was lost.
Only from the 14th-15th centuries did great care begin to be taken for the arrangement of monastic libraries.
In the monastic and public libraries of medieval Europe, books were chained to the shelves. This practice was common until the XVIII century, which was due to the great value of each copy of the book. Inventory lists for especially valuable books used the special term "libri catenati" - "chained books". Manuscripts were protected not only by chains and locks, but also by incantations and spells. On one of these books, the rector's inscription was preserved that the thief of the book would be punished with a whip, fall ill with smallpox, cholera, a nasty rash, and even get a hump.
One of the largest libraries is Vatican library . However, access to the library's funds is very limited; no more than 150 specialists and scientists can get into it every day, who, in order to work with documents, need to make a special request explaining the reason for their interest. It is even more difficult to get into the closed collections of the library and the Vatican archive. And only the Pope has the right to take books out of the library.
An outstanding role in the spread of education and the development of librarianship was played by the universities that were created in the 12th century on the basis of episcopal and city schools. By 1400 there were already 55 universities operating in Europe. Each university had a library and scriptorium. University libraries were replenished from their own scriptoriums and at the expense of gifts and donations.
In the XIII century, the first manual on the arrangement of the library appeared - the work of the rector of the Amiens church, Richard de Fourneval, "Book Science".
At the end of the XIV century, the monks of the Franciscan order in England for the first time tried to compile a consolidated inventory of the book stocks of 160 church and monastery libraries. This solid work was called The Catalog of Books in England.
Since the Middle Ages began to develop and private libraries .
The father of European bibliophilia is the bishop of one of the largest English dioceses, the educator of the future English king Edward II, statesman (at one time - the Lord Chancellor of England), diplomat de Bury, author of the book "Philobiblon", the first fully extant work on the book. In contrast to the rich library, "Filobiblon" not only did not disappear in time, but also spread widely. For five recent centuries(since 1473), this treatise was reprinted 35 times in 10 languages.
The history of the library of Cardinal Jolio Mazarin, which became the first public library in France, is interesting. To create it, he invited Gabriel Naudet, the author of the treatise "Advice on the Arrangement of a Library" (1627), which was widely popular in Europe. In 1644, the library was opened to readers, it contained 45,000 volumes, and the reading room was designed for 100 people at a time. When in 1651, fearing popular anger, the cardinal secretly fled from France, the Parlement of Paris ordered the arrest of Mazarin and the confiscation of his property. A huge cash prize was appointed for the head of the cardinal, and in order to raise funds for the prize, it was decided to auction Mazarin's library. So the library, which Naudé had been creating for a whole decade, ceased to exist in a few days. When in 1653 Mazarin returned victorious to his palace, he created a new library. Many participants in the auction - for money or for free - returned the books bought at the auction to the cardinal. The Mazarin Library was later declared a national treasure and is now part of the National Library of France.
An interesting, but more prosperous story is the library of Louis XIV, who ordered to release for the education of his son educational library Greek and Roman classics, stripped of obscenities and accompanied by commentary on difficult passages. The collection of 64 volumes was completed 28 years after the start of work, when the son himself had long had children.
More than 10 pages of the second volume of the famous "Encyclopedia" Diderot devoted to the book, the history of libraries and book collecting.
The first project for establishing a public library in Moscow was put forward in the 1920s. XVII century Vasily Vasilyevich Kiprianov. By the way, in 1705, by decree of Peter I, his father headed a civil printing house in Moscow, a “library” was opened at the printing house to sell books to the population ?, in connection with which Peter awarded him the title of librarian. This terminological misunderstanding led to a different interpretation of subsequent events.
The first attempt at a public library in America was made in the 17th century. It was organized in Boston in 1655 from donations from a private individual. For almost a century, this library served the population of the city, until it died in a fire.
The largest library in the world is the Library of Congress in Washington DC. It was founded in 1800 at the suggestion of US President T. Jefferson. The Library of Congress receives 7,000 documents daily. The library staff is about 5,000 employees. The library's funds include books, newspapers, photographs, manuscripts, audio and video materials and other documents.
The largest library in Russia and the second largest library in the world is the Russian state library(former Lenin Library) in Moscow. It was created in 1828 on the basis of the Rumyantsev Museum.
the largest electronic library today is the World Digital Library. It was opened in 2009. The founder of this global project is the US Library of Congress, and the participants of this international project are national book depositories and archives of various countries, including Russia. The library provides free access to cultural treasures and archives from around the world in seven languages, including Russian.
World's first book-free library to open in US
The world's first public library without books (BiblioTech) was opened in 2013 in the Texas city of San Antonio. In it, ordinary books are completely replaced by electronic ones.
The space library aboard the orbital complex "Mir" has more than a hundred books - from the works of Tsiolkovsky to the novels of Ilf and Petrov.
The Indiana State University Main Library building sinks one inch (more than 3 cm) every year because the engineers did not take into account the weight of the books it contained during construction.
In the library of the Finnish city of Vantaa quietly returned the book, handed out more than 100 years ago. It was not possible to find out who returned the book to the library. Judging by the notes on the inside cover, the book was last issued at the beginning of the 20th century.
The history of librarianship academic discipline occupies a traditionally important place in the training of future librarians. It is known that lectures on the history of librarianship were read to students of the library school at Columbia University in Albany - the world's first special educational institution organized by M. Dewey in 1887.
The students of the People's University named after V.I. A.L. Shanyavsky, organized in Moscow in 1913.
According to the State educational standard in the specialty 052700 "Library and Information Activities", the course is included in the general professional block of disciplines (federal component).
And a funny fact. The most "effective" of the bibliocleptomaniacs is Steven Bloomberg, who stole more than 23,000 rare books from 268 libraries. His book collection is valued at approximately $20 million.
In the Middle Ages, there were libraries in the monasteries, in which scriptoria (workshops for copying manuscripts) operated. With the invention of printing by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century, the number of libraries began to increase, and in modern times, with the spread of literacy, the number of library visitors also increased.
When the great vizier of Persia Abdul Kassim Ismail (X century AD) was going on his way, the library followed him everywhere. 117,000 book volumes arranged in alphabetical order were transported by four hundred camels.
The largest library in the world is the Library of Congress in Washington DC. The library, opened in 1800, has over 75 million titles. It would take you about 137 years to get a glimpse of all the library items.
The second largest library in the world is the Russian State Library (former Lenin Library), created on the basis of the Rumyantsev Museum. The volume of the library fund exceeds 42 million items.
For several centuries, scientists and archaeologists from all over the world have been trying to find a priceless artifact - a collection of books and documents of Ivan the Terrible. According to one version, the royal library was hidden within the walls of the Moscow Kremlin.
The space library aboard the orbital complex "Mir" has more than a hundred books - from the works of Tsiolkovsky to the novels of Ilf and Petrov.
You won't find Agatha Christie's book "Ten Little Indians" in any of the American libraries. In America, the detective is published under the title "And there was no one." For reasons of censorship, the Negro children were initially replaced by Indians, and then by sailors.
In the public libraries of medieval Europe, books were chained to shelves. This practice was common until the XVIII century, which was due to the great value of each copy of the book.
Steven Bloomberg, who stole over 23,000 rare books from 268 libraries, is considered one of the most famous bibliocleptomaniacs. Bloomberg used a wide variety of methods to assemble his collection, estimated at about $20 million, sometimes sneaking into the library through the ventilation system and elevator shaft.
*The Library of Congress in Washington is by far the largest in the world. It contains about 75 million different titles, including audio and video recordings, photographs.
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If we divide all the books stored in the Moscow “public” library by all employees, we get 29,830 copies per person.
*Library employees give out about 400 bibliographic references per day.
*The collection of documents and books of Ivan the Terrible is still the most mysterious library in the world. Historians believe that it was hidden or transported to another place by Ivan IV himself. For several centuries, scientists and archaeologists from all over the world have been trying to find a priceless artifact. According to one version, the library is hidden within the walls of the Moscow Kremlin.
* Bibliocleptomania is not just a difficult to pronounce word, it is a real disease, which is characterized by an immense love for books and the desire to appropriate library copies for oneself. One of the most famous representatives of this disease is Steven Bloomberg, who stole more than 23,000 rare books from 268 libraries in different parts of the world. To compile his collection, estimated at about $ 20 million, Bloomberg used a variety of methods: ventilation system and elevator shaft.
*Abdul Kassim Ismail- the Grand Vizier of Persia (10th century) was always next to his library. If he went somewhere, the library "followed" him. 117 thousand book volumes were transported by four hundred camels. Moreover, books (i.e. camels) were arranged in alphabetical order.
* In public In the libraries of medieval Europe, books were chained to the shelves.Such chains were long enough to remove the book from the shelf and read, but did not allow the book to be taken out of the library.This practice continued until the 18th century., which was due to the great value of each copy of the book.
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To one of the libraries in the Finnish city of Vantaadiscreetly returned the book, handed out over 100 years ago.According to the librarian, they were never able to find out who brought the book to the library. However, judging by the notes on the inside cover, the book was last officially issued in early twentieth century.
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1. The oldest active library is located in the Monastery of St. Catherine on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. It was built in the middle of the 6th century and also became the second largest collection of religious materials in the world (after the Vatican). It is closed to the general public, and only monks and invited students can borrow books from it.
The National Library of France is the oldest public library service still in operation. She began her work in 1368, when she was still housed in the Louvre. Over the past nearly 700 years, the library has moved many times to new and larger premises.
2. The largest library in the world is the Library of Congress with 158 million titles on approximately 828 miles of bookshelves (1 mile = 1.6 km - approx.Lifeinbooks). The library's collection contains over 36 million books and other printed materials, 3.5 million records, 13.7 million photographs, 5.5 million maps, 6.7 million sheet music, and 69 million manuscripts.
3. The smallest libraries in the world appeared on the streets of New York - they have room for just one reader. There are 40 books in one bright yellow building. Their goal is to help citizens take a break from the frantic pace of life in the metropolis, giving them the opportunity to read for free. good stories. The Little Free Library was designed by several innovative architects using recycled materials to protect the books from the weather.
4. The highest library in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is located on the 60th floor of the JW Marriott Hotel in Shanghai (China). It is located at a height of 230.9 meters above the street. 103 bookshelves hold an ever-expanding collection of Chinese and English books. By the way, the area of the library is not that big - only 57 square meters.
5. The very first librarian was Zenodotus of Ephesus. He was a Greek literary critic, grammarian, and commentator on Homer. He, a student of Filit Kossky, became the first librarian of the Alexandria Library.
6. The first library classification system was invented during the Han Empire. However, in North America it is believed that personal collections of books came to the continent thanks to the French settlers of the 16th century.
7. The first mobile library, according to the British monthly The British Workman, appeared in 1857. At this time, she traveled around the circle of eight villages in Cumbria. The Victorian merchant and philanthropist, George Moore, set up a project to "spread good literature among rural population". The Warrington Rolling Library, established in 1858, was another early British mobile library.
8. Most often stolen, most likely, the Bible, and after it - the Guinness Book of Records.
9. The first floating library appeared in 1959. To "start" this project, I had to use a number of ships. A custom-made special vessel entered service in 1963. Its length is 24 meters. Today the ship is used for summer tourist cruises.
Sourced from libraryoutsourcing.com
- The first information about libraries dates back to the time of the existence of Sumer (3000 BC). Books - tablets were then stored in clay jugs. On each shelf there was a clay "label", the size of a little finger with the name of a branch of knowledge. The safety of the funds was helped by a formidable warning: “He who dares to carry away these tables: let him punish Ashur and Belit with his anger, and the name of him and his heirs will forever be forgotten in this country”
In the library of the Museyon of Alexandria, founded in the 3rd century BC. e. Ptolemy I, king of Egypt, was the first to implement a system of cataloging and arranging books, created by the scientist and poet Kalimachus. AT different years Archimedes, "Copernicus of Antiquity" - Aristarchus of Samos, physician Herophilus of Chalcedon, astronomers Hipparchus and Claudius Ptolemy, mathematician Euclid, philologist Zenodotus worked in the library. Scientist Erastofen - founder geographical science and the first mapper of the world served in this library for 40 years.
Mark Antony in 43 BC e. gave the Pergamon Library to the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. It was truly a royal gift!
In the Arab Caliphate, libraries were called "houses of wisdom". Before entering the library, the reader took a bath at the source, which was located at the entrance. The floor of the library was covered with carpets, on which the readers were located.
The first library in Russia is the library at St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, founded in 1037 by Yaroslav the Wise.
In medieval China, the owner of a private collection, Zhao Rong, wrote a treatise "Regulations on the circulation of ancient books." At the same time, the owners of private collections - Ding Xiongfei and Huang Yuji signed an “Antiquities Exchange Agreement” - a kind of book exchange agreement with elements of an interlibrary loan ... "... If he has it, but I don't have it, or he doesn't have it, but I have it, then we exchange. We agreed on this."
In the XIII century in the library of the Sorbonne (France) books began to be chained to specially made consoles. In 1338, according to the catalog, there were 1720 books, only 300 of which were chained in the reading room, i.e. available to students.
In the 15th century, the Italian Duke Federigo da Montefeltro developed an instruction in which he formulated the requirements for a librarian: scholarship, pleasant character, personable appearance, eloquence.
For many years, the French scientist Gabriel Naudet worked in the library of Cardinal Mazarin. He was the author of the work "Councils for the Organization of the Library" (1627). Naudet was convinced that "an unordered collection of books cannot be called a library, just as an armed crowd cannot be considered regular army or a pile of building materials - a house.
Successfully, from 1690 for 23 years, led the Ducal Library in Germany famous philosopher and scientist Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Leibniz developed the concept of a scientific library and the classification of sciences. One of the elements of the concept was the "Book Core" plan, which is a series of proposals for the preparation of lists of new publications, consisting of their short descriptions. He also formulated the idea of creating a unified catalog of the country's libraries. Leibniz did not allow "filling up the world with paper trash."
The great German playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who ran the library for 10 years, expounded his professional position like this: “I consider myself the keeper of library treasures, and I would not like to be a dog in the manger, but I would not like to be a servant in a barn who throws hay into the trough of every hungry horse” (1770)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe for more than 30 years (since 1797) served as a minister in a small Thuringian state. His responsibilities also included library management. At the beginning of 1798, Goethe prepared a document in which he outlined the requirements for organizing the work of the library: ensuring control over the safety of funds, keeping records of new receipts and lending, and a constant work schedule. He also introduced a condition: books in a contaminated state should not be returned to the library! Privileged circles expressed great protests about such unheard-of impudence, but they had to submit.
An outstanding scientist - mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky simultaneously served as rector of Kazan University (1827 - 1846) and director of the university library.
The writer and fabulist Ivan Andreevich Krylov worked for 30 years in the Imperial Public Library of St. Petersburg. In the same library worked: historian Ermolaev, Korf, writer and philosopher Odoevsky.
In 1876, the first American Library Association was formed in Philadelphia at the initiative of the director of the library of Columbia University in New York, Melvil Dewey, and in 1887, a professional library association was opened. library school. Special attention Dewey focused on attracting women to the library profession. Until the 20th century, the profession of a librarian was considered an exclusively male privilege.
On July 17, 1918, a decree of the Council of People's Commissars "On the protection of libraries and book depositories of the RSFSR" was issued, which marked the beginning of the nationalization of libraries. Home libraries with more than 500 books were subject to requisition. Even the issuance of a safe-conduct to the owner did not rule out the subsequent seizure of the collection. The Department of Scientific Libraries of the People's Commissariat developed a norm of books for the library of one scientist - no more than 2 thousand volumes. The ideologist of book nationalization was N.K. Krupskaya. The campaign was carried out by appointed emissaries. The instructions regulating their activities were developed by Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov, a well-known writer.
During the Third Reich in Germany, everything that was created in science by non-Germans was declared unusable. The editions confiscated from the libraries were stored in special funds of prohibited literature. In accordance with the "Imperial Law for the Restoration of the Service Bureaucracy" of May 23, 1933, racial purges of personnel for Aryan origin were carried out with particular care in libraries.
For many years (since 1995) the outstanding writer Jorge Luis Borges, the author of the philosophical essays "The Babylonian Library" and "The World Library" worked as the director of the National Library of Argentina. In particular, he wrote: “I wanted to save from oblivion the boundless and contradictory Library, where the vertical deserts of changing books endlessly pass into each other, erecting, destroying and confusing everything in the world, like a God who has fallen into a fever...”
At the end of the 20th century, much was written and talked about the end of the traditional library and the new information age, although even in the 19th century. Odoevsky described a certain mathematical formula that would be derived "in order to attack exactly the page that is needed in a huge book and quickly calculate how many pages can then be skipped without a flaw."
In the 20th century, one of the most daring predictions of the development of libraries was given by Stanislav Lem in his novel “The Magellanic Cloud”… “…In 2531, a new way of storing human thought was introduced. They began to use trions: small crystals of quartz. A crystal the size of a grain of sand could contain as much information as contained in an ancient encyclopedia. Created one for everything the globe Central Trion Library…”
Sinister Russian heroine folk tales- Baba Yaga was the keeper of the “library of balls”, i.e. librarian. Quietly she sat in the hut on chicken legs and gave the lost Ivan Tsarevich works of knot writing - threads with signs from knots, wrapped in balls. Unwinding the ancient guide, Ivan read the nodular notes and thus learned how to get to the place. Apparently, the Tsareviches were undisciplined readers, because fairy tales are silent about the return of the balls to the forest point of issue.
Tradition says that the monk - deacon Grigory Otrepyev, the future False Dmitry I, was the librarian of the Chudov Monastery, lived in the cell of the archimandrite and was revered "like a good scribe and scribe."
In the library chronicle, faces, events, assessments changed, and on the basis of the vast experience accumulated over thousands of years, working methods were verified, and library traditions were created. Along with talented craftsmen, who have decorated and glorified their native land from century to century, the librarian has always occupied and will continue to occupy a special place, since he works in the field of spiritual culture. 