



Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)






                      THE BEGINNINGS OF LIBRARIES




[Illustration:

  A COLLECTION OF QUIPUS
  AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, N. Y.
  NOS. B 3453, 8704
]

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                  THE

                        BEGINNINGS OF LIBRARIES


                                   BY

                       ERNEST CUSHING RICHARDSON

                   LIBRARIAN OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY


                       PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
                               PRINCETON

                        LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
                        OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

                                  1914




------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          _Copyright, 1914, by
                       Ernest Cushing Richardson_


                        PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1914

[Illustration]




------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                PREFACE


A considerable mass of memoranda on the early history of libraries has
been gathered by the author of this essay during the last twenty-five
years, and out of this material various essays have been published from
time to time on Antediluvian Libraries, Medieval Libraries, Some Old
Egyptian Librarians, etc. The fact that the unworked mass of modern
information through excavations is so great as to put off for a long
time still a systematic treatise, has led to the plan of publishing
these essays and addresses from time to time as completed and in uniform
style. Although written for very different audiences and in various
methods, each is an attempt to gather information not generally
accessible and to be, so far as it goes, either a contribution to
knowledge or to the method of knowledge, a sort of preliminary report or
investigation in the field, pending full and systematic report. The
nucleus of this essay on the _Beginnings of Libraries_ was an address to
the Library School of the New York Public Library at the beginning of
the academic year 1912-13, and takes its color from this fact, but it
has been freely enlarged. The writer owes special thanks to the American
Museum of Natural History in New York.

                          ERNEST CUSHING RICHARDSON.
                    Princeton University Library,
                    October 12, 1913.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                CONTENTS


           Preface                                              v
           Contents                                           vii
           List of illustrations                               ix
        1. Introduction                                         1
        2. The study of beginnings                              5
        3. Definition of the Library                           14
        4. Method                                              22
        5. Antediluvian libraries. General                     25
        6. Libraries of the gods                               27
        7. Animal and plant libraries?                         34
        8. Preadamite libraries                                39
        9. Adamite and patriarchal libraries before the flood  42
       10. Prehistoric and historic libraries                  50
       11. The evolution of record keeping                     54
       12. Memory libraries                                    65
       13. Pictorial object libraries                          76
       14. Mnemonic object libraries                           91
       15. Picture book libraries                             100
       16. Ideographic records                                114
       17. Types of primitive libraries                       116
       18. Contents of primitive libraries                    132
       19. The administration of primitive libraries          142
       20. The beginnings of library schools                  151
       21. The beginnings of library research                 156
       22. Bibliography                                       159




                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


       1. A collection of quipus                   Frontispiece.
       2. A collection of message sticks                      94
       3. A collection of wampum                              98
       4. A record ornament of leopard teeth                 102
       5. Tupai Cupa’s Tattoo Marks                          106
       6. Picture writing, Lone Dog’s Winter Count           108




------------------------------------------------------------------------




                      THE BEGINNINGS OF LIBRARIES

                          § 1. _Introduction_


This talk is addressed to those beginning library work as a life work.
This connects “library work” with two significant phrases, “those
beginning” and “as a life work”.

This phrase “as a life work” suggests what is perhaps the chief value of
a library school training. The distinction of and main justification for
all kinds of higher education is that such education aims to put the
student in position to view his work to be done as a whole