BABAYEMI IFEOLUWA

AUL/SCI/20/00674
CHEMICAL SCIENCES

HISTORY OF LIBRARIES
The history of libraries began with the first efforts to organize collections of documents.
Topics of interest include accessibility of the collection, acquisition of materials, arrangement
and finding tools, the book trade, the influence of the physical properties of the different
writing materials, language distribution, role in education, rates of literacy, budgets, staffing,
libraries for specially targeted audiences, architectural merit, patterns of usage, and the role of
libraries in a nation's cultural heritage, and the role of government, church or private
sponsorship. Since the 1960s, issues of computerization and digitization have arisen.
The earliest records of a library institution as it is presently understood can be dated back to
around 5,000 years ago in the Southwest Asian regions of the world. One of the oldest
libraries found is that of the ancient library at Ebla (circa 2500 BCE) in present-day Syria. In
the 1970s, the excavation at Ebla's library unearthed over 20,000 clay tablets written
in cuneiform script.
The Al Qarawiyyin Library was founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri and is the oldest working
library in the world. It is in Fez, Morocco and is part of the oldest continually operating
university in the world, the University of al-Qarawiyyin. The library houses approximately
4,000 ancient Islamic manuscripts. These manuscripts include 9th century Qurans and the
oldest known accounts of the Islamic prophet Muhammed.
The Assyrian King Assurbanipal created one of the greatest libraries in Nineveh in the
seventh century BCE. The collection consisted of over 30,000 tablets written in a variety of
languages. The collection was cataloged both by the shape of the tablet and by the subject of
the content.
The Greek government was the first to sponsor public libraries. By 500 BCE both Athens and
Samos had begun creating libraries for the public, though as most of the population was
illiterate these spaces were serving a small, educated portion of the community.
The library at Alexandria, Egypt, was renowned in the third century BCE while kings
Ptolemy I Soter and Ptolemy II Philadelphus reigned. The library included a museum, garden,
meeting areas and of course reading rooms. The Great Library, as it is known, was one of
many in Alexandria. Beginning at its inception through the first century BCE Alexandria was
a well-known center for learning, the quantity and quality of the libraries speak to this
renown.
It was not until the Middle Ages that libraries became a part of culture. During
the Renaissance era, more people became educated and relied on libraries as a place to study
and gain knowledge. During the Renaissance most of the text held in libraries were religious
text. Libraries helped enrich the culture of those who were educated by providing this
valuable resource otherwise unavailable.

EARLY LIBRARIES
The first libraries consisted of archives of the earliest form of writing – the clay
tablets in cuneiform script discovered in temple rooms in Sumer, some dating back to 2600
BC. About an inch thick, tablets came in various shapes and sizes. Mud-like clay was placed
in the wooden frames, and the surface was smoothed for writing and allowed to dry until
damp. After being inscribed, the clay dried in the sun, or for a harder finish, was baked in a
kiln. For storage, tablets could be stacked on edge, side by side, the contents described by a
title written on the edge that faced out and was readily seen. The first libraries appeared five
thousand years ago in Southwest Asia's Fertile Crescent, an area that ran from Mesopotamia
to the Nile in Africa. Known as the cradle of civilization, the Fertile Crescent was the
birthplace of writing, sometime before 3000 BC. (Murray, Stuart A.P.) These archives, which
mainly consisted of the records of commercial transactions or inventories, mark the end
of prehistory and the start of history.
Things were much the same in the government and temple records on papyrus of Ancient
Egypt. The earliest discovered private archives were kept at Ugarit; besides correspondence
and inventories, texts of myths may have been standardized practice-texts for teaching new
scribes. There is also evidence of libraries at Nippur about 1900 BC and those
at Nineveh about 700 BC showing a library classification system.
Over 30,000 clay tablets from the Library of Ashurbanipal have been discovered at
Nineveh, providing modern scholars with an amazing wealth of Mesopotamian literary,
religious and administrative work. Among the findings were the Enuma Elish, also known as
the Epic of Creation, which depicts a traditional Babylonian view of creation, the Epic of
Gilgamesh, a large selection of "omen texts" including Enuma Anu Enlil which "contained
omens dealing with the moon, its visibility, eclipses, and conjunction with planets and fixed
stars, the sun, its corona, spots, and eclipses, the weather, namely lightning, thunder, and
clouds, and the planets and their visibility, appearance, and stations", and
astronomic/astrological texts, as well as standard lists used by scribes and scholars such as
word lists, bilingual vocabularies, lists of signs and synonyms, and lists of medical diagnoses.
The tablets were stored in a variety of containers such as wooden boxes, woven baskets of
reeds, or clay shelves. The "libraries" were cataloged using colophons, which are a
publisher's imprint on the spine of a book, or in this case a tablet. The colophons stated the
series name, the title of the tablet, and any extra information the scribe needed to indicate.
Eventually, the clay tablets were organized by subject and size. Unfortunately, due to limited
bookshelf space, when more tablets were added to the library, older ones were removed,
which is why some tablets are missing from the excavated cities in Mesopotamia.
According to legend, mythical philosopher Laozi was keeper of books in the earliest library
in China, which belonged to the Imperial Zhou dynasty. Also, evidence of catalogues found
in some destroyed ancient libraries illustrates the presence of librarians.

THE ROLE OF ANCIENT LIBRARIES

The documents in these early libraries contained key knowledge about building and growing
societies rather than philosophical or artistic items. These ancient records however played
another important role – they created the position of librarians. The duty io ancient librarians
consisted of giving the people access to the preserved information.
It was around the beginning of the classical period when libraries began collecting items
other than precious resources. Moreover, libraries slowly became a feature of large cities,
including Constantinople or Nineveh. These institutions were primarily designed to protect
the documents from damage caused by natural disasters or wars. They were rarely open to the
public with no possibility to rent papyrus or leather scrolls. In the unlikely situations when
they were accessible, visiting scholars could come study and copy various topics from the
stored documents. The librarians’ role continued to be binding people and the recorded
information.