Not Your Local

Libraries have been around for centuries. Modern libraries have books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, and computers. All of it designed to provide us with access to information. In that regard, libraries from eons past have always been the same.

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One of the oldest continually operating libraries is the Al Qarawiyyin Library in Fez, Morocco. It was founded in 859 A.D. by a woman named Fatima al-Fihri. It’s a university library, and there is also a mosque on the site. There is a room filled with original Islamic manuscripts, with four locks and four keys kept in the hands of four different people, which speaks to the unimaginable value placed on these manuscripts. Recently the Moroccan government has made an effort to restore it from its deteriorated state to the original brilliance it once had.

St. Walberga’s Church in the Netherlands is home to the Librije. It was built in the 1500s, although the church itself was built in the 1000s. If you walk through the library, you’ll see something modern readers are not used to seeing: books chained to long desks that look like pews. The desks are polished dark wood. The book covers are shiny leather. The chains are heavy. In the Middle Ages, books were so few and so precious that librarians were very territorial of their parchment and leather charges; their jealous protection led to chains. I maintain that books are no less precious simply because we’ve done away with chains.

The Medici family of the Middle Ages was known for its cultural and political influence across Europe, especially in the Italian city-states. The Medicean Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze, which houses the Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy, is one such cultural legacy. The library was opened in 1571, and over the years the library has obtained more than 11,000 manuscripts and 5,000 books. The library was designed by Michelangelo, famous for the painting on the Sistine Chapel and the marble statue David. The building is beautiful; for a bibliophile the books and manuscripts are more so.

The libraries mentioned above, and most libraries of the Middle Ages in Europe and the Middle East, were owned by churches, stewarded by monks and nuns. Prior to that, in the time of the Romans and Greeks, libraries were privately owned. The Malatestiana Library in Cesna, Italy, is the first European civic-owned library, meaning it was the first library supported through what we might call tax dollars. Even though it was not owned by the Church, its first building was a former monastery and the reading room looks like a church. A bibliophile or a lover of architecture would revel in the solemn quiet of the place.

Those libraries are still standing. But libraries of the ancient world, though no longer in existence, were also collections of manuscripts, clay tablets, and scrolls. The Library at Alexandria was one of the largest and most significant libraries ever built. Unfortunately, the entire library burned down, possibly through a series of fires rather than only one, and thousands of scrolls were lost. Its destruction has long symbolized the loss of cultural knowledge.

What will the loss of our libraries mean? So many of us have access to information through our ubiquitous Internet connections. But while I enjoy my comfortable leather recliner and the tea cup at my elbow, reading a cheap paperback or the glowing screen before me removes me from the beauty of the library. While my local library looks more like a Swedish store, there is still beauty in long lines of colorful spines. My library also hosts a quilting circle, and the group provides beautiful, soft artwork to hang on the walls. Local photographers and art students display their framed work on the ends of shelves. And it is still a place to come together and share knowledge. I am not necessarily advocating the end of new information-sharing technologies, but I am advocating saving the libraries we still have, enjoying them, and sharing them with posterity.