Even before the first bound books appeared, libraries already existed. In cities around the world, these temples of knowledge not only served as warehouses for storing clay tablets and scrolls, but were also used as centers of culture and education. Below you will find Interesting Facts about the eight most magnificent libraries Ancient world.
The oldest known library in the world was founded sometime in the 7th century BC. e. for the “royal contemplation” of the Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal. Located in Nineveh (modern-day Iraq), it included approximately 30,000 cuneiform tablets organized according to themes. Most of these signs were archival documents, religious conspiracies and scientific texts, but it has also been home to several works of literature, including the 4,000-year-old Epic of Gilgamesh. A book lover, Ashurbanipal built much of his library by taking works from Babylonia and other territories he conquered. Archaeologists stumbled upon the ruins of this library in the mid-19th century, and most of her collection is currently kept in the British Museum in London. It is interesting to note that although Ashurbanipal obtained many of the cuneiform tablets through plunder, he seems to have been particularly concerned about theft. An inscription on one of the texts warns that if anyone decides to steal the tablets, the gods will “overthrow him” and “erase his name and his seed from the earth.”
Library of Alexandria
After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. e. began to control Egypt former general Ptolemy I Soter, who sought to create a center of learning in the city of Alexandria. The result was the Library of Alexandria, which ultimately became the intellectual crown jewel of the ancient world. Little is known about the physical layout of the site, but at its peak the library may have included more than 500,000 papyrus scrolls containing works of literature and texts on history, law, mathematics and natural sciences. Library and related Research institute attracted scientists from all over the Mediterranean. Many of them lived on its territory and received government scholarships, when conducting research and copying its contents. IN different time Strabo, Euclid and Archimedes were among the scholars of this library.
The end of this great library is traditionally dated to 48 BC. BC, when it allegedly burned down after Julius Caesar accidentally set fire to Alexandria harbor during a battle against the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy XIII. But while the fire may have damaged the library, most historians now believe it continued to exist in some form for several more centuries. Some scholars claim that the library finally disappeared in 270 during the reign of the Roman Emperor Aurelian, while others believe that it happened even later in the fourth century.
Library of Pergamon
Built in the third century BC by members of the Attalid dynasty, the Library of Pergamon, located in what is now Turkey, was once home to 200,000 scrolls. The library was located in a temple complex dedicated to Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, and is believed to have consisted of four rooms. The books themselves were stored in three rooms, and the fourth served as a conference room for banquets and scientific conferences. According to to the ancient chronicler Pliny the Elder, the library of Pergamon eventually became so famous that it competed with the one of Alexandria. Both libraries sought to collect the most complete collections texts, and competing schools of thought and criticism developed within them. There is even a legend that the Ptolemies of Egypt stopped the supply of papyrus to Pergamon in the hope of slowing down the development of the library. As a result, the city later became a leading center for the production of parchment paper.
"Villa of the Papyri"
Although she was not the most large library antiquity, the so-called “Villa of Papyri” is the only one whose collection has survived to this day. About 1,800 of her scrolls were located in the Roman city of Herculaneum in a villa that was most likely built by Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Piso. When Vesuvius erupted nearby in 79 AD, the library was buried under 30 meters of volcanic material, which is the reason for its preservation. The blackened and charred scrolls were rediscovered in the 18th century, and modern researchers used every possible tool, from multispectral imaging to x-rays to try to read them. Much of the catalog has yet to be deciphered, but research has already shown that the library contains several texts by an Epicurean philosopher and poet named Philodeus.
Libraries of Trajan's Forum
Somewhere around 112 AD. e. Emperor Trajan completed the construction of a multifunctional complex of buildings in the center of Rome. This forum had plazas, markets and religious temples, but it also included one of the most famous libraries of the Roman Empire. The library technically had two separate rooms: one for work on Latin, the second - for works in Greek. The rooms were located on opposite sides the portico that housed Trajan's Column, a large monument built to honor the emperor's military successes. Both rooms were made of concrete, marble and granite and included large central reading chambers and two levels of shelf niches containing approximately 20,000 scrolls. Historians are not sure when Trajan's double library ceased to exist. Preserved written references about it in the late fifth century AD, which suggests that it existed for at least 300 years.
Library of Celsus
During the imperial era, there were more than two dozen large libraries in Rome, but the capital was not the only place, where magnificent collections of literature were located. Somewhere around 120 AD. e. the son of the Roman consul Celsus completed the construction of a memorial library for his father in the city of Ephesus (modern Türkiye). The decorative façade of the building still stands today and features a marble staircase and columns, as well as four statues representing wisdom, virtue, intelligence and knowledge. The interior consisted of a rectangular chamber and a series of small niches containing bookcases. The library contained about 12,000 scrolls, but the most characteristic feature turned out to be, without any doubt, Celsus himself, who was buried inside in a decorative sarcophagus.
Imperial Library of Constantinople
The imperial library appeared in the fourth century AD during the reign of Constantine the Great, but it remained relatively small until the fifth century, when its collection grew to 120,000 scrolls and codices. However, the Imperial Library's holdings began to dwindle and it fell into disrepair over the next few centuries due to neglect and frequent fires. Most crushing blow it suffered after the Crusader army captured Constantinople in 1204. Nevertheless, its scribes and scholars copied countless pieces of ancient Greek and Roman literature, making copies of damaged papyrus scrolls.
House of Wisdom
The Iraqi city of Baghdad was one of the world centers of education and culture. Perhaps no institution was more significant to his development than the House of Wisdom. It was created in the early ninth century AD during the reign of the Abbasids and was centered around a huge library filled with Persian, Indian and Greek manuscripts on mathematics, astronomy, science, medicine and philosophy. The books attracted leading scholars of the Middle East, who flocked to the House of Wisdom to study the texts and translate them into Arabic. Their ranks included the mathematician al-Khwarizmi, one of the fathers of algebra, as well as the thinker al-Kindi, often called the “Arab philosopher.” The House of Wisdom remained the intellectual center of the Islamic world for several hundred years, but met a terrible end in 1258 when the Mongols sacked Baghdad. According to legend, so many books were thrown into the Tigris River that its waters became dark with ink.
The emergence of libraries as repositories of written monuments dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. When excavating old cities of the states of the Ancient East - Assyria, Babylonia, Urartu - archaeologists find special rooms for storing books, and sometimes the books themselves. However, the written monuments of those times can be called “books” very conditionally: they were clay shards, scrolls of papyrus or parchment.
Libraries have served science, education and culture for many centuries. The first information about the existence of libraries dates back to the heyday of the culture of the peoples of Mesopotamia, who were located in the territory modern Iraq, by the time of the existence of the Sumerian state. Ancient texts date back to around 3000 BC. The most ancient texts of Mesopotamia are written in Sumerian. The first libraries arose as collections of various kinds of state, economic and other documents. These institutions performed the functions of libraries and archives.
The next stage in the development of libraries is palace libraries or libraries of rulers. The most ancient Among those that have survived to this day, the library owned by the king is considered Hittite kingdom – Hattusilis III (1283 – 1260 BC). At the beginning of the twentieth century, archaeologists discovered about 11 thousand cuneiform tablets here, indicating that this library had official documents(royal messages and addresses), chronicles, ritual texts. Unlike the Sumerian tablets, these “books” bear the name of the author, his address and title, and even the name of the scribe. There is reason to assert that there was also a catalog compiled by the names of the authors. A feature of the Hittite tablets is the authorship of literary and scientific works. Hittite librarians and archivists created the science of storing books. Cuneiform texts of the Hittite library catalogs have been preserved, in which there were notes about lost documents. Labels used individual works. All this testifies to the order that librarians maintained in the repository of clay books.
The largest and most famous of the libraries of the Ancient World is library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal(668-631 BC). This cuneiform library, which included the richest collection of Babylonian literature, according to various estimates, contained from ten to thirty thousand clay books, each of which had a cuneiform stamp on it: “Palace of the King of Kings.” Ashurbanipal's library had a universal character. The fund contained lists of kings, royal messages, lists of countries, rivers, mountains, commercial materials, works on mathematics, astronomy, medicine, dictionaries and works on grammar. There were religious texts in a separate room.
There is information about the “disclosure” of the library’s collections. Special tiles indicated the title of the work (based on its first line), the room where it was located, and the shelf on which it was stored. Clay tablets were used for writing. “Books”-tablets were stored in special clay jars. On each shelf there was a clay “label”, the size of a little finger, with the name of a particular branch of knowledge.
Writing and books were highly revered in Egypt, and libraries were considered the center of wisdom. The Egyptians had a god of the moon and wisdom - Thoth, who also patronized the scribes; goddess Seshat - patroness of libraries; god of knowledge Sia. The profession of a scribe was very honorable; it was not for nothing that noble nobles and officials loved to be depicted in the pose of a writer, with a scroll in their hands. There is evidence that indirectly indicates that people performing the duties of librarians (although these were not professional librarians in modern understanding), were also surrounded by honor: on the banks of the Nile, the tombs of two librarians were discovered - father and son, who served under Pharaoh Ramses (about 1200 BC). This suggests that in Ancient Egypt librarian position like many others government positions was hereditary.
From the second half of the 14th century BC. In ancient Egypt, there were libraries at the temples that served the priests. These libraries were called the “house of books” (or “God’s house of books”) and the “house of life.” The first concept, which was used until the beginning of the Ptolemaic era, referred to temple libraries. The position of keeper of the library (“house of life”) was a state position and was inherited, since it could only be held by those admitted to possessing “higher knowledge.”
One of the most famous temple libraries was the library at the Ramesseum temple, founded around 1300 BC. Pharaoh Ramses II (c. 1290 – 1224 BC). At the entrance to Ramses's library there was an inscription - “Pharmacy for the soul.” On the door and walls of the library, gods were depicted, patronizing writing, knowledge, and libraries. The book depository contained religious works, prophecies, fairy tales, stories, medical treatises, didactic teachings, and works on mathematics.
In Egypt, papyrus was used for writing. Books from it were stored in boxes and tube-shaped vessels. Many papyri have survived to this day, but complete libraries have not survived, since papyrus is a less durable material than clay. With the advent of papyrus, there were more and more scribe-librarians. Thus, the libraries of the Ancient World performed the function of collecting and storing documents, and the librarians of that time were scribes, collectors, and keepers of documents. The archival principle is expressed in the fact that the documents were available only in a single copy. These documents were copied, as evidenced by the name of the copyist; the work was long and expensive. Documents were systematized, and catalogs also existed in libraries. In addition, the libraries of the Ancient World did not perform the function of providing access to library funds; they could be used by a very limited circle of “initiates”. In terms of service, the library of the Ancient World provided access to the funds of a very limited circle of users: in the Ancient East - the ruler himself and his entourage, in Ancient Egypt - priests and a narrow circle of initiates.
During the period of antiquity in Ancient Greece, the word “library” appears from Greek words biblion (book) and theke (repository). An ancient library can also be considered as publicly accessible (for readers certain circle), and as an institution serving science. The foundation of the first large library in Ancient Greece dates back to the 4th century BC. and is associated with the name of Aristotle (384 - 323 BC). He owned a unique library containing about 40 thousand scrolls. One of his most famous students, Alexander the Great, took part in the creation of this library.
The libraries of antiquity are becoming in a certain sense public, however, only for certain segments of society. They also began to fulfill the role of scriptoria - institutions that not only made copies of documents, but also had an obligation to provide copies that guaranteed the authenticity of the texts. At the same time, libraries appeared, with a meaning close to the modern one.
The richest and most famous book collection of antiquity was the Alexandria Library of the Ptolemaic kings, founded in beginning of III century BC King of Egypt Ptolemy I Soter (323 – 283 BC). The Library of Alexandria was the richest and most complete library of its time. The main task library was a collection of all Greek literature and translations of works of other peoples into Greek language, and very different - from the works of Greek tragedians to cookery books.
Imagine what kind of erudition (and physical endurance!) it was necessary to maintain the eighth wonder of the world - the Library of Alexandria, which consisted of more than 700,000 scrolls of handwritten books! But only a few people worked there. They had to be literally generalists, because in Library of Alexandria, in addition to the book depository and reading rooms, there were also an observatory, zoological and medical museums - their maintenance was also the responsibility of librarians.
The Library of Alexandria was headed by the greatest scientists: Erastosthenes, Zenodotus, Aristarchus of Samos and others. The Library of Alexandria developed rules for the classification and inventory of collections. One of the leaders of the library, Callimachus, compiled a huge bibliographic dictionary “Tables and descriptions of teachers (or poets) by century and from antiquity.” Although only small fragments of 120 volumes have reached us, frequent mentions of “Tables...” in ancient Greek documents allow us to judge the content and significance of the work done. Describing the books, Callimachus cited initial words each work, and then provided all the information he knew about the author. The library had a staff of copyists who copied books. The library catalog compiled by Callimachus was regularly updated. The Library of Alexandria became the largest cultural and scientific center ancient world. Readers came to work with the scrolls and receive copies of works of interest from many parts of the Hellenic world.
The work of librarians was characterized by a clear specialization - they kept records of new acquisitions, worked with the fund, and ensured the preservation of books (the Library of Alexandria created unique system ensuring the safety of the library collection; First of all, it was protected from dampness). Librarians had assistants whose duties included recording new manuscripts, parsing and reviewing manuscripts, and copying texts. There were people who kept order and protected manuscripts from moths and dampness.
In accordance with the classification system, scientific literature was divided into five sections: “History”, “Rhetoric”, “Philosophy”, “Medicine”, “Legislation”. A special section was also allocated - “Miscellaneous”. Within each section, the books were arranged according to the names of the authors, and included short biography author and list of his works. Next to the title of each work, the first few words of the text, the number of scrolls, and the number of lines in each scroll were indicated.
The work in the library was clearly organized: the servants kept a clear record of new arrivals, worked with the fund, and were involved in ensuring the safety of the fund, classification and inventory. The fund was divided into main and doublet; the doublets were stored in another building at the other end of the capital.
At first III millennium BC e. On the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers there was one of the centers of ancient civilization - Mesopotamia. Her South part was called Mesopotamia. Wonderful geographical and climatic conditions created conditions for the life and development of people in this territory long before the period we are considering. Several dozen small city-states were built on the hills and surrounded by walls. It was ancient Lagos, Ur, Nippur and others that became the main carriers Sumerian civilization. The youngest of them, Babylon, developed so rapidly that in the 1st millennium BC. e. The Greeks began to call Mesopotamia after his name Babylonia.
For a long time, scientists have been archaeological excavations on the spot ancient cities Mesopotamia. Archaeologists discovered the ruins of palaces and temples; numerous household items, works of art, and tools were found. Among all the other finds, they saw a large number of Sumerian cuneiform tablets of various sizes and shapes, which contained information about state structure Sumer, its economy and social life. Household records, lists of words for memorization, school texts and essays, reporting documents of scribes of the 3rd millennium BC. e. and other various information was left for posterity by the inhabitants of antiquity.
During excavations in the city of Ur, several libraries and small collections were found sacred texts, personal libraries. Special meaning had finds made by scientists in the city of Nippur (modern Iraq) - the oldest religious center of the Sumerians. About 100 thousand clay tablets, housed in 62 rooms, sometimes broken into dozens of pieces or with erased inscriptions, were found at the site of the Nippur temple library.
In total, about 150 monuments of Sumerian literature are known. Among them are poetic recordings of myths, epic tales, prayers, hymns to gods and kings, psalms, wedding and love songs, funeral laments, laments for public disasters, which formed part of the temple service; Didactics are widely represented: teachings, edifications, debates and dialogues, as well as fables, anecdotes, sayings and proverbs. Of course, such a distribution by genre is completely arbitrary and is based on our modern ideas about genres.
The Sumerians themselves had their own own classification- in almost every literary work V last line its “genre” is designated: song of praise, dialogue, lamentation, etc. Unfortunately, the principles of this classification are not always clear to us: works of the same type, from our point of view, fall into different categories in Sumerian designations, and vice versa - into the same category included monuments of obviously different genres, say, hymns and epics. In a number of cases, classification designations indicate the nature of the performance or musical accompaniment (crying to a pipe, singing to a drum, etc.), since all works were performed aloud - sung, and if not sung, then recited after memorization from a tablet.
The tablets found in Sumerian libraries were kept in closed boxes or baskets. Each of them had labels with inscriptions about the nature of the materials they contained: “Documents relating to the garden”, “Dispatching of workers”, etc. There were signs with notes about the loss of texts, a list of 87 works - original prototypes of the catalogue. Long work to decipher the records allowed scientists to get an idea not only of the “funds” and storage conditions of the tablets, but also to expand their knowledge of the history of the people who once lived in this territory.
At the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. The temple library of Nippur was burned by the Elamite conqueror Kudur-mabuk.
“Rome, Florence, all sultry Italy are located between the four walls of his library. His books contain all the ruins of the ancient world, all the splendor and glory of the new!”
G. Longfellow
The ancient world through the mouths of great scientists, poets, statesmen declared the enormous power and importance of libraries. From time immemorial, libraries were created by rulers, major dignitaries, priests and clergy, scientists and educators.
Libraries ancient civilizations and states - custodians of the scientific and cultural achievements of peoples contributed to the mutual enrichment of cultures of different countries, continuity in the development of sciences and literature. And in our time, the preserved information about ancient libraries and their collections often serve as the basis for new scientific discoveries.
Libraries first appeared on ancient East. Usually the first library is called a collection of clay tablets, approximately 2500 BC. e., found in the temple of the Babylonian city of Nippur.
In one of the tombs near Egyptian Thebes, a box with papyri from time II was discovered transition period(XVIII - XVII centuries BC). During the New Kingdom era, Ramses II collected about 20,000 papyri.
The most famous ancient Eastern library is a collection of cuneiform tablets (mainly legal nature) from the palace of the Assyrian king of the 7th century BC. e. Ashurbanipal in Nineveh.
IN ancient Greece the first public library was founded by the tyrant Clearchus (IV century BC).
Alexandria became the largest center of ancient literature. 
library. It was created in the 3rd century BC. e. Ptolemy I and was the center of education of the entire Hellenistic world. The Library of Alexandria was part of the mouseĩon (museum) complex. The complex included living rooms, dining rooms, reading rooms, botanical and zoological gardens, an observatory and a library. Later, medical and astronomical instruments, stuffed animals, statues and busts were added and used for teaching. The museum included 200,000 papyri in the Temple (almost all libraries of antiquity were attached to temples) and 700,000 documents in the School. The museum and most of the Library of Alexandria were destroyed around 270 AD.
In the Middle Ages, centers of book learning were monastery libraries, which operated scriptoria. There was not only correspondence Holy Bible and the works of the Church Fathers, but also the works of ancient authors. During the Renaissance, Renaissance figures literally hunted for Greek and Latin texts preserved in monasteries. Due to the enormous cost of manuscripts and the laboriousness of their production, books were chained to library shelves.
The advent of printing brought enormous changes to the appearance and activities of libraries, which were now increasingly different from archives. Library collections are beginning to grow rapidly. With the spread of literacy in modern times, the number of library visitors also increases.
The most famous libraries of antiquity:
Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh
Hellenistic Library of Alexandria
The Library of Pergamon is its main competitor in antiquity
Otrar Library in Otrar
Al-Hakam II Library in Cordoba
Library, translated from Greek – “biblio” - book, “teka” - repository, that is, “storehouse of books”.
The role of libraries in people's lives can be judged by the figurative names that have long been assigned to them. They were called temples of wisdom, the memory of humanity, repositories of the treasures of civilization.
The library is ordinary and at the same time amazing place, because books live in this room. We are accustomed to a book, we rarely think of it as a miracle, as a treasure, and it happens that we do not always appreciate and take care of it. But think about it, until recently the book was the only means of transmitting knowledge from generation to generation. As soon as people invented writing, it became possible to collect and accumulate knowledge.
The whole story human mind associated with books and libraries. This is not a calm story at all! They fought for books, burned them, lost them, found them, dug them up in the ruins of cities buried by time, saved them from enemy invasion as the most precious thing. Today's library seems to be the epitome of peace, quiet and order.
As at all times, she serves people. It is interesting that already the first libraries were not just a room where books were stored: they were real libraries in in every sense words. There were special tablets on which the first lines of the works stored in the library were written, which helped to conveniently group and then find the required literary source.
The very first libraries appeared in Ancient Egypt. They were called "houses of papyrus" and "houses of life." They were created at palaces and temples. Egyptian pharaohs gave great importance education. During excavations above the entrance to one of the rooms of the palace of Ramses II, archaeologists discovered the inscription: “Pharmacy for the soul.” According to the ancient Egyptians, books can be compared to a medicine that makes a person’s mind strong and ennobles his soul.
In the 19th century, archaeologists excavated the capital of the Assyrian kings, Nineveh, on the banks of the Tigris River and discovered a cuneiform library there, established by King Ashurbanipal. It was called the “House of Instructions and Advice” and was a huge collection of clay tablets, which, at the direction of the king, were taken from the temples and from the houses of noble and educated Assyrians.
The tablets remained for about twenty years in the British Museum in London. When scientists managed to decipher the cuneiform, it became clear that this was a whole library of clay books. Each such “book” consisted of “sheets” - tablets same size. On each tablet was the title of the book - the initial words of the first tablet, and also the number of the “sheet”. Books were placed in in strict order, there were catalogs - lists indicating the names of books and the number of lines in each tablet. It is noteworthy that this library had a thematic catalogue. All her books were divided into topics: history, law, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, legends and myths. The catalog reflected the title of the work. As well as the room and shelf where one should look for the desired sign. About 30 thousand clay books were kept there, each of which had a cuneiform stamp on it: “Palace of Ashurbanipal, King of the Universe, King of Assyria.” The Library of Nineveh is the most famous ancient library.
Ancient Greece, or Hellas, was famous for its scientists and philosophers who created schools and academies with libraries. The first public library was founded by the tyrant Clearchus in Heraclea. The largest private library was considered to be the collection of the ancient Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle. Aristotle's library in Lyka, in the area of Athens where the great ancient philosopher delivered his lectures, numbered tens of thousands of scrolls. After the death of the scientist, his library became part of the Museion, the Temple of the Muses. During excavations at Geherculaneum, the library of the poet Philodemus was discovered, which contained about 1860 scrolls.
The center of Egyptian culture was Alexandria, where the Ptolemaic dynasty ruled. At the beginning of the third century BC, Ptolemy I decided to turn Egypt into a center of culture and the arts and founded the famous Museion (following the example of the Athenian one). It was a huge ensemble: a university with classrooms and living quarters, an observatory, Botanical Garden, a zoo and a renowned library of papyrus scrolls. Ptolemy II expanded the Library of Alexandria, sending his people to all corners of the world to obtain the most valuable works.
Under Ptolemy II, the patron saint of scientists and poets, the Museion and the Library of Alexandria reached their greatest prosperity. The son of Ptolemy II, Ptolemy III, issued a decree according to which anyone arriving in the harbor was obliged to give up or sell the books he had. They were transferred to the library, and copies were returned to the owners with a note that they corresponded to the original. The library's collection consisted of 700-800 thousand texts in many languages.
In 47 BC, part of the library burned down, the other was destroyed during clashes between pagans and Christians.
Modern Library of Alexandria. Egypt.
The Library of Alexandria was rivaled by the Library of Pergamon, which was created in the second century BC and contained about 200 thousand papyrus and parchment manuscripts. The Pergamon Library was second only to the Library of Alexandria in terms of the size of its collection. Most of it consisted of medical treatises - Pergamum was considered the center of medicine. The history of the library ended in 43 BC, when Pergamum became a province of Rome, and most of the books ended up in the Library of Alexandria.
Today Pergamum is located in Turkey, and the ruins of the library are among the tourist sites.
The first Roman public library was created according to Greek models by Sesonius Pollio. Later, libraries arose in the Roman Empire, established by the emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Trajan, and Byzantine rulers. The earliest Christian libraries arose under the large Episcopal churches.
In 1037 Kyiv prince Yaroslav the Wise (about 980 – 1054) founded the first library in Kievan Rus. She was in the Kiev St. Sophia Cathedral. It was the most full meeting written monuments Ancient Rus'– The Gospel, the books of the prophets, the lives of the saints. Important things were also kept here. government documents. 500 volumes - not many European libraries could boast of such a collection at that time. It is unknown where the library of Yaroslav the Wise disappeared: perhaps it perished during a great fire in 1124 or was destroyed in 1240 during the defeat of Kyiv by troops Mongol Khan Batu.
One of the most mysterious libraries is the library of the first Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible (1530 – 1584). He possessed a unique book collection, which he kept in the deep dungeons of the Kremlin. Foreigners who saw the book collection said that there were, among other things, very rare books. After the death of the king, his library became a legend, as it disappeared without a trace. The mystery of the library has haunted historians and archaeologists for centuries. Before today the search for the library was never successful.
Since the time when the first libraries arose, their custodians have been concerned that books do not go missing. The book sign has long served this purpose. Nowadays it is called bookplate.
The first public library in Russia was Public library in St. Petersburg. It was founded in 1795. It was allowed to be visited by “all decently dressed citizens” three days a week from 9 am until sunset.
The largest in Russia, and in terms of the number of stored materials the second in the world (after the US Library of Congress) - Russian state library in Moscow (until 1992 - Leninskaya). It contains about 40 million publications. Currently, microfiche, microfilms, transparencies, audio and video cassettes are becoming more and more widespread and included in the collection of libraries, and electronic media are also becoming more widespread.
Libraries are: state, municipal, private, educational and scientific.
There are special libraries: historical, medical, technical, pedagogical, artistic, agricultural, etc.
And there are the most ordinary libraries, which are always close to home - regional ones, where you can just go and read a few pages about something interesting or leaf through a magazine that you have no longer been able to subscribe to or buy.
And there are probably also personal (home) libraries in every family, at least those about which Conan Doyle wrote: “May your poor bookshelf, let it decorate your home. Close the door of the room from the inside... You have left everything low, everything vulgar behind. Here, waiting for you, your silent friends stand in rows. Look around their formation. Choose the one that is closest to your soul now. Now all that remains is to reach out to him and go with him to the land of dreams.”
Eternal companions: writers about books, reading, bibliophilia / Comp. A. Blum. - M: Book, 1983. - 223 p.
Schoolchildren's Handbook. History of world culture / Comp. F. Kapitsa.- M.: Philological. society “Slovo”, TKO “AST”, 1996.- 610 p.
Great libraries // Book world Terra – 2000- No. 2 – p.44-45
