In the early days of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, libraries of papyrus and parchment rolls, stored on shelves, in pigeon-holes and in chests, were collected, at first by sovereigns, then by nobles, then by scholars. For centuries they occupied rooms in palaces and in temples. These rooms were only places of storage. Other rooms, or oftener colonnades, served for reading. The distinction between book rooms and reading rooms thus appeared at an early date.
The first mention of a separate library building is made in Egypt in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the third century B.C. Two centuries before, Pisistratus, in Greece, had established a public library, whether or no in a house of its own is not noted. About 40 B.C., Asinius Pollio seems to have built the first library building in Rome. Augustus soon built two more, and thereafter public libraries and private library rooms abounded. In the fourth century A.D. there were twenty-eight “public libraries” in Rome. Although these were undoubtedly, while “public,” used mainly by scholars, having few of the functions which so highly diversify and differentiate modern public libraries, their buildings must have begun to assume some common arrangement which would tend to constitute a type. I am unable to reproduce, however, any clear picture of the architecture of these first buildings.
As to fixtures, Mr. Clark sums up a chapter:[2] “Unfortunately no enthusiast of those distant times has handed down to us a complete description of his library, and we are obliged to take a detail from one account, and a detail from another, and so piece the picture together for ourselves. What I may call the pigeonhole system, suitable for rolls only, was replaced by presses which could contain rolls if required, but were especially designed for codices (the first phase of parchment, in the modern book form). These presses were sometimes plain, sometimes richly ornamented. The floor, the walls, the roof were also decorated. As the books were hidden in the presses, the library note was struck by numerous inscriptions, and by busts and portraits of authors.”
This Roman conception of a library prevailed during the dark ages and has survived to our own time in its most sumptuous form, embodied in the Vatican library, whose interior has so often been represented in photographs and engravings.
With the close of the western empire, in A.D. 476, the ancient era of libraries may be said also to close without any lessons to us as to building.
Mediæval History
Thus far libraries were gathered and cared for by monarchs, princes, or prominent citizens. With the growth of Christianity literature fell to the care of the ecclesiastics. Their earliest collection, of which record remains, was shelved in the apse of a church. About A.D. 300, monastic communities began to cherish church literature. Existing records all indicate that cloisters were the first Christian libraries, perhaps because all the monks could assemble there. What few precious manuscript volumes the laborious brothers had fashioned, with others given or bought, were stored on shelves or in “presses” on the inner walls. The readers either took the books to their cells, or read them by the light of the windows in the outer wall. There were the reading room, the book room, and the lending room, all in one long, well-lighted cloister. Later, as more manuscripts accumulated, they were stored at first in niches in the wall, then in adjacent closets or small windowless rooms. Readers still studied by the best light. To follow Clark’s quotation:[3] “On the north syde of the Cloister (at Durham) in every window were ... Pews or Carrels where every Monk studyed upon his books. And in every Carrel was a deske to lye their bookes on.”
Elsewhere it is explained that each window was in three parts, with a carrel from one stanchell of the window to another.
This use of windows suggested to me a new convenience for research in our modern “stack,” which is described in a later chapter as the “stack carrel.”[4]