History
Contenido
Las bibliotecas son una realidad consolidada a lo largo de más de cuatro mil años de historia, que discurre paralela a la de la escritura y el libro.
Antique
In their origins they had a nature more typical of what is considered an archive today than a library. They were born in the temples of the Mesopotamian cities, where they initially had a conservative function, recording events linked to religious, political, economic and administrative activity, at the service of a caste of scribes and priests. The documents were written in cuneiform writing on clay tablets, a rough and heavy support, but one that has guaranteed their preservation. The archive libraries of Mari "Mari (city)"), Lagash and Ebla, as well as that of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, stood out especially.
In Ancient Egypt there were two types of institutions: Houses of Books, which served as archives for administrative documentation, and Houses of Life, which were study centers for scribes and which had collections from which copies could be made. Writing, in its various forms, hieroglyphic, hieratic or demotic, was collected in rolls "Roll (manuscript)") of papyrus.
In ancient Greece, books and libraries reached a great development. Libraries adopted forms that can be considered antecedents of the current ones. Greek writing, derived from the Semitic aliphate, made it possible to generalize access to reading and books in a certain way and to make libraries unrelated to temples appear for the first time. The Hellenistic period was the birth of great legendary libraries, such as the Library of Alexandria or the Library of Pergamon, which were created with the purpose of gathering all the social knowledge of their time and making it available to scholars.
In Rome, indebted to Greek culture, the same writing medium was used, the papyrus roll. The first public library of which there is evidence was founded there, by Asinius Pollio, and there were great libraries, such as the Octaviana and Palatina, created by Augustus, and the Ulpia Library, by the Emperor Trajan. Roman libraries used to have a Greek and a Roman section.
With the rise of Christianity, a new format began to spread, the parchment codex, and reading began to move from pagan institutions, in clear decline, to those of the nascent Christian Church.
Middle Ages
In medieval times, with the invasions of the barbarians and the fall of the Western Roman Empire, culture retreated and took refuge in monasteries and cathedral offices, the only places that housed libraries worthy of the name. They are centers where Christian culture and the remains of classical culture are kept, at the service of Religion. Libraries of monasteries, such as Saint Gall, Fulda, Reichenau, Monte Casino Abbey, Santo Domingo de Silos, San Millán de la Cogolla, Sahagún "Sahagún (Spain)") or Santa María de Ripoll, became the centers of knowledge of their time.
Beginning in the Late Middle Ages with the creation of universities first and with the invention and diffusion of the printing press later, new university libraries were created, while the book reached new sectors of the population. The General Study of Salamanca, the predecessor of its University, was the first to have a library for the use of students since the date of its creation (1218).
In the East, Byzantium acted as a link with classical culture, which survived in this way, influencing the Arab and Slavic world and also backward Western Europe. Here there were great libraries in monasteries and cities. The Arab world also created its libraries linked to mosques and Koranic teaching centers, madrassas. Some of the largest libraries of their time were also created here, such as that of the caliph Al-Mamum") in Baghdad or Abd-al-Rahman III and his son Al-Hakam II in Córdoba.
In the late Middle Ages, during the Renaissance, King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1458-1490) was a patron of painters, poets, musicians, scientists and all kinds of intellectuals who came from all parts of Europe. In the 1460s, he founded the Bibliotheca Corvinniana in his palace in the city of Buda, which had more than 3,000 books, being considered the largest of its time after the Vatican Library. Although the library was destroyed after the Turkish invasion of 1526, many of the tomes survived and are currently housed in the world's most important museums.
Modern Age
The Renaissance marked by the invention of the printing press, the creation of Johannes Gutenberg, and the struggles derived from the Protestant Reformation, saw the emergence, thanks to humanist ideals, of a new model of princely library. This trend will lead to the appearance of royal libraries and those of the high nobility, which, thanks to the new values, are opened to an audience of scholars and scholars. The French one from Fontainebleau or those created in Austria and Bavaria stand out in the century. In Spain, those of Hernando de Colón, the Complutense University and El Escorial, created by Philip II, stand out as a model for later Baroque libraries.
In the century, great scholarly libraries were founded, such as the Bodleiana in Oxford, the Ambrosiana in Milan or the Mazarine in Paris, of which Gabriel Naudé, author of Advis pour dresser una bibliothequè, considered the Father of Librarianship (also known as Librarianship), was librarian.
During the century, the British Museum Library, predecessor of the current British Library, and the Royal Library, the seed of the National Library of Spain, were created. In this century, the Braidense Library in Milan and the Royal Library in Lisbon were born. Also dating from this period were what would become, over time, the university libraries of Yale, Harvard and Princeton.
Contemporary Age
The French and American revolutions promoted the beginning of the spread of new democratic principles throughout Europe and America and the birth of a true will to make culture and education accessible to all. In the world of libraries, this marked the birth of a disentailment fever that spread throughout the continent and transferred to society an immense bibliographic treasure from the institutions of the Old Regime, particularly the Catholic Church. Despite everything, this desire to bring culture closer to the entire society did not become a reality until the middle of the century, with the appearance in the Anglo-Saxon world of the public library.
Gradually, the idea that all human beings have the right to free access to information was consolidated. However, following Carrión, it can be stated that in light of this fact three currents were established that have determined the library thinking of the century:.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the socialist model entered into crisis and has now practically disappeared, with some exceptions, trying to adapt to new democratic values and continuous budget cuts. The Anglo-Saxon model has spread throughout the world during the second half of the century and has strongly influenced current Librarianship, especially thanks to the doctrines of IFLA and UNESCO, with programs such as UAP") (Universal Availability of Publications), UBC") (Universal Bibliografic Control), PAC") (Preservation and Conservation) or UDT") (Universal Dataflow and Telecommunications). The continental conception still survives, exerting a great influence on national libraries and, ultimately, on many research and higher-level libraries. It has also been influential by contributing its educational nature to the library.
At the end of the century, digital libraries appeared. With the development of digital readers, "electronic" books emerge and with them digital and electronic libraries.