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  • The History of the Library in Western Civilization:A Review Essay
  • II David B. Gracy (bio)
The History of the Library in Western Civilization, vol. 1, From Minos to Cleopatra. By Konstantinos Sp. Staikos . New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2004. 374 pp. $75.00. ISBN 9781584561149.
The History of the Library in Western Civilization, vol. 2, The Roman World—From Cicero to Hadrian. By Konstantinos Sp. Staikos . New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2005. 364 pp. $150.00. ISBN 9781584561514.

What is a library? This important question can be answered from multiple perspectives, but too rarely is it asked and are answers explored within the broad context of the historical connection between the library and society or, more specifically, the place, function, and contribution of the library as a social agency in different societies and periods. One reason, no doubt, is that few works of writing are more difficult to configure (or more valuable to produce) than a substantial and flowing overview of a social phenomenon such as the library. Creating such a work requires a broad, mature, and historically rich knowledge of the phenomenon coupled with a capacity for synthesis. Library history needs such works. And with the appearance of the first two lavishly illustrated volumes of a projected five-volume set carrying the luxurious and immodest title of The History of the Library in Western Civilization, a library historian can be forgiven for confessing to unreserved anticipation.

But back to the original question, the answer to which would seem to be the appropriate beginning point for launching the history of the library in Western civilization for a broad audience: what is a library? While both the components of the library and the ways in which this social agency has related to its surrounding social and cultural contexts have manifested themselves differently in diverse civilizations and periods, a useful starting point for answering the question might be anticipated to [End Page 438] be the familiar and contemporary. In 2007 a library is widely conceived of in three principal ways. In one, it is a purposefully assembled collection of information materials that is systematically classified and ordered. Historically, the materials have been defined in terms of the media on or in which the information is recorded—clay tablets, papyrus rolls, codex books, tapes, disks, and so on. Second, the library is commonly considered to be an organization in which an administration and staff of professionals hired for the purpose (normally located in a facility adapted or constructed also for the purpose) function to maintain a collection of information materials. Third, a library is recognized as a place in which collections of information materials are kept—a bookcase, a room in a private home, a publicly financed and purpose-built structure, and now also a virtual location in cyberspace.1

A history of the library could trace the development of any one of these three—collection (with its classification system), administration, or place. But if the library is all these things and is, as Jesse Shera defined it—an instrumentality created to maximize the utility of graphic records for the benefit of society, achieving that goal by working with the individual and through the individual and the society—then what has not been part of the library that would seem to be necessary to it? For example, if the objects collected in the library are a component of the library story, then the history of the library encompasses also the history of those objects and of the writing that those objects contain, the latter in turn encompassing the history of the process of writing, of the objects used in producing writing, and of the symbols and orthographies created for the writing. Further, since forgery, especially in the early period of libraries, contributed to the stream of material that poured from the minds of authors and scribes and found its way into library collections, the history of authentication must be part of the history of the library as well. And finally, appreciating that the content of the library is the knowledge of humankind, then does not the history of the library embrace also the creation and ultimate use of that knowledge...

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