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LIBRARIES . A library (from See also:Lat. See also:liber, See also:book), in the See also:modern sense, is a collection of printed or written literature. As such, it implies an advanced and elaborate See also:civilization. If the See also:term be extended to any considerable collection of written documents, it must be nearly as old as civilization itself. The earliest use to which the invention of inscribed or written signs was put was probably to See also:record important religious and See also:political trans-actions. These records would naturally be preserved in sacred places, and accordingly the earliest libraries of the See also:world were probably temples, and the earliest librarians priests. And indeed before the See also:extension of the arts of See also:writing and See also:reading the priests were the only persons who could perform such See also:work as, xvi. 18e.g. the compilation of the Annales Maximi, which was the See also:duty of the pontifices in See also:ancient See also:Rome. The beginnings of literature proper in the shape of See also:ballads and songs may have continued to be conveyed orally only from one See also:generation to another, See also:long after the record of important religious or See also:civil events was regularly committed to writing. The earliest collections of which we know anything, therefore, were collections of archives. Of this See also:character appear to have been such famous collections as that of the Medians at See also:Ecbatana, the Persians at See also:Susa or the hieioglyphic archives of Knossos discovered by A. J. See also:Evans (Scripta Minoa, 1909) of a date synchronizing with the XIIth See also:Egyptian See also:dynasty. Itt is not until the development of arts and sciences, and the growth of a considerable written literature, and even of a distinct See also:literary class, that we find collections of books which can be called libraries in our modern sense. It is of libraries in the modern sense, and not, except incidentally, of archives that we are to speak. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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