My online Library brings some of my thoughts & philosophies. My actual house is filled with books, from many table-style display books to 3+ library cases, each with 4 shelves and more hardcover and paperback books than I can count… there’s always one laying around!
Libraries have existed around the world for thousands of years, storing and saving thoughts, ideas and of course books from many of our ancestors. Some still exist, some are gone… let me share a little.
I was blessed as a youngster to frequently visit our local library to take several books home for a week.
Just a short walk with Mum from my childhood home… the reading room image does bring some vague memories!
Having loved to read books for 60+ years, my aging brain today has little to no retention (from the after-effects of my now >25-year-old brain tumor) preventing me from fully enjoying new stories.
Books still bring wonder to me, despite the loss!!
When you think about history and the libraries of such things, those French cave paintings from 35,000 years ago (also see the Culture page) and those tiny carved fertility icons just don’t cut it — too far back to be part of a library at that time!
Greece, on the other hand, was clearly the start of our societal world (admittedly with a gap, ending when the Dark Ages were done in about 800 AD), with Aristotle (born near Thessaloniki in 384 BC), an ancient philosopher who is considered to be the “Father of Western Philosophy”… In 343 BC, he was tasked to tutor Alexander the Great, creating a personal library at that time to help him produce many of his hundreds of books (papyrus scrolls); very few records remain after ~2,350 years.
Others abound, as you can see here… click the 3 images; a small selection of the huge British Library collection.
Looking back to my home country of England, the most interesting library (aside, of course, from the gigantic British Library in London, with so many areas) is the ancient Bodleian Library, “the Bod,” where one could go for a few hours daily for more than a year before completing a full visit.
The library, built first in the early 1300’s; see the “Early History” section here? These changes ended in 1598 & the library remains open as of this writing.
Part of the Oxford University, the library collection has more than 13 million books, scrolls, manuscripts and maps.
To close your visit to my online Library, millions of “things to read” have been created since the invention of clay tablets and those papyrus scripts… there are perhaps 140 bazillion or so around the world today!!
The printing press, invented in Germany around 1445 by Johannes Gutenberg enabled “mass production” of books and provided the rapid dissemination of knowledge throughout Europe. Before that, most texts were printed in Europe using xerography, a form of woodblock printing that is similar to the Chinese method used to print “The Diamond Sutra” in 868.
A published book by me may appear on a future day! Do go view my active eDiary page & watch this space?