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Library: An Unquiet History
Provides an intriguing historical study of libraries and books, their preservation, and destruction, from the U.S. to Europe and Asia, from medieval monasteries and Vatican collections to the ever-changing information highway of today. 10,000 first printing.
245 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
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4,405 people want to read
About the author
Matthew Battles
9Ìýbooks38ÌýfollowersMatthew Battles is a Curatorial Fellow with metaLAB, a project of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.
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September 18, 2018
The Vulnerability of Concentrated Knowledge
Battles’s charming little book on the history of the library is a moral tale, the theme of which he frequently emphasizes. Put simply: the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Until modern times, the largest collections of human knowledge were without exception subject to destruction, either by accident, purposeful vengeance, or governmental directive. The conclusion has to be that although libraries are rather quaint places to hang out and read, they really are an ontologically high-risk institution.
It strikes me that the library is intellectually high-risk as well. Collections must be organized to be of any use. This implies a system of classification by which ‘similar� items are catalogued and usually stored near one another in the collection. The purpose of such a system is obviously to facilitate research by associating items with each other, typically by subject, author, and epoch. But as every librarian knows, all such classifications are arbitrary. No book neatly fits into a single category and ultimately it is placed in one for the convenience of the librarian not that of the reader or researcher. Battles describe classification systems as “an opaque cabalism of numbers and letters defiant of intuition, replete with the formulaic rigor of ‘scientific� bibliography.� I think he’s being kind.
Nevertheless very large collections like the Library of Congress tend to exert an organizing power which is a virtual monopoly. The LC system of classification has become an unofficial worldwide standard. Part of the reason for this is economic: it is expensive to train and employ cataloguers who are competent in the use of the arcane coding conventions of the trade. Cheaper by far to buy the cataloguing records of the LC and use them in one’s own less prestigious institution. These lesser entities, including Battles’s Widener Library and Oxford’s Bodleian, may quibble with the arcana of the coding but they don’t mess with the LC’s decision on where a book belongs and how it gets connected to other books.
The economic efficiency of classification, therefore, becomes the ‘vector� for the spread of the LC system; and also, therefore, for the spread of the errors as well as the arbitrariness it contains. In my own little college library in Oxford, which specializes in philosophy and theology, for example, the LC classifications could only be considered incompetent and were rejected en masse. This was a great annoyance to our Bodleian ‘partners� who set a formidable standard of anal/obsessive authoritarianism. My suspicion has always been that the arbiters of taste within the LC hierarchy had very little knowledge or interest in either philosophy or theology. I have no reason to believe that their ability in, say, quantum physics or post-modern fiction is any better.
Part of the problem, perhaps the major part, is that librarians themselves have become obsolete ever since the explosion of learning in the early eighteenth century. Leibniz, it is said, was the last man to know everything; he died in 1716. If so, he would have been the last competent cataloguer. Since then, the best any librarian could do would be to venture a vague guess about what is connected to what in the soup of knowledge. But he or she needs a job after all: no libraries, no librarians; no need for classified collections, no need for libraries. QED. But the pretense persists that libraries are necessary. Librarians are the fascist enforcers of the classification scheme. Aside from ensuring quiet and returning books to the stacks, they have no function. A security guard watching a monitor and a robot could serve just as well.
Any modern classification system, particularly because it is fixed in its general structure, is an anachronism. It’s not merely the old fashioned card catalogues which are out of date; it is the basic concept of librarians that collected knowledge is necessary and can be classified, as if it were an expanded version of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, that is simply wrong. These classifications exist not for readers, who can now search for documents by any terms they wish through a half dozen publicly available search engines, but for librarians who otherwise would become either warehouse assistants trained by Amazon or contract programmers.
As one who enjoys the feel, the smell and the craft of books, I am sad that, based on Battles’s narrative and my own experience, the library as an institution is a dead man walking. Its physical vulnerability, the impossibility of maintaining the conceit of a ‘universal� or even a complete specialized collection, the irrational and unnecessary systems of library classification are compelling facts. Additionally, as Battles suggests, most published material is junk and not worth either the cost of classification or the space to store it. This historical fact becomes more apparent everyday as the internet churns out more and more of it. Do I trust any of the functionaries in any library to decide the toss about what constitutes junk versus intellectually important material? Hardly.
The space of the library might, therefore, still be useful for a quiet read, but the miles of shelving and the skills of an army of cataloguers constitute a depreciating liability not a cultural asset. And maintenance of such an asset is not a very skilled or necessary profession. But there is an upside: WalMart greeters might qualify for new career possibilities.
Battles’s charming little book on the history of the library is a moral tale, the theme of which he frequently emphasizes. Put simply: the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Until modern times, the largest collections of human knowledge were without exception subject to destruction, either by accident, purposeful vengeance, or governmental directive. The conclusion has to be that although libraries are rather quaint places to hang out and read, they really are an ontologically high-risk institution.
It strikes me that the library is intellectually high-risk as well. Collections must be organized to be of any use. This implies a system of classification by which ‘similar� items are catalogued and usually stored near one another in the collection. The purpose of such a system is obviously to facilitate research by associating items with each other, typically by subject, author, and epoch. But as every librarian knows, all such classifications are arbitrary. No book neatly fits into a single category and ultimately it is placed in one for the convenience of the librarian not that of the reader or researcher. Battles describe classification systems as “an opaque cabalism of numbers and letters defiant of intuition, replete with the formulaic rigor of ‘scientific� bibliography.� I think he’s being kind.
Nevertheless very large collections like the Library of Congress tend to exert an organizing power which is a virtual monopoly. The LC system of classification has become an unofficial worldwide standard. Part of the reason for this is economic: it is expensive to train and employ cataloguers who are competent in the use of the arcane coding conventions of the trade. Cheaper by far to buy the cataloguing records of the LC and use them in one’s own less prestigious institution. These lesser entities, including Battles’s Widener Library and Oxford’s Bodleian, may quibble with the arcana of the coding but they don’t mess with the LC’s decision on where a book belongs and how it gets connected to other books.
The economic efficiency of classification, therefore, becomes the ‘vector� for the spread of the LC system; and also, therefore, for the spread of the errors as well as the arbitrariness it contains. In my own little college library in Oxford, which specializes in philosophy and theology, for example, the LC classifications could only be considered incompetent and were rejected en masse. This was a great annoyance to our Bodleian ‘partners� who set a formidable standard of anal/obsessive authoritarianism. My suspicion has always been that the arbiters of taste within the LC hierarchy had very little knowledge or interest in either philosophy or theology. I have no reason to believe that their ability in, say, quantum physics or post-modern fiction is any better.
Part of the problem, perhaps the major part, is that librarians themselves have become obsolete ever since the explosion of learning in the early eighteenth century. Leibniz, it is said, was the last man to know everything; he died in 1716. If so, he would have been the last competent cataloguer. Since then, the best any librarian could do would be to venture a vague guess about what is connected to what in the soup of knowledge. But he or she needs a job after all: no libraries, no librarians; no need for classified collections, no need for libraries. QED. But the pretense persists that libraries are necessary. Librarians are the fascist enforcers of the classification scheme. Aside from ensuring quiet and returning books to the stacks, they have no function. A security guard watching a monitor and a robot could serve just as well.
Any modern classification system, particularly because it is fixed in its general structure, is an anachronism. It’s not merely the old fashioned card catalogues which are out of date; it is the basic concept of librarians that collected knowledge is necessary and can be classified, as if it were an expanded version of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, that is simply wrong. These classifications exist not for readers, who can now search for documents by any terms they wish through a half dozen publicly available search engines, but for librarians who otherwise would become either warehouse assistants trained by Amazon or contract programmers.
As one who enjoys the feel, the smell and the craft of books, I am sad that, based on Battles’s narrative and my own experience, the library as an institution is a dead man walking. Its physical vulnerability, the impossibility of maintaining the conceit of a ‘universal� or even a complete specialized collection, the irrational and unnecessary systems of library classification are compelling facts. Additionally, as Battles suggests, most published material is junk and not worth either the cost of classification or the space to store it. This historical fact becomes more apparent everyday as the internet churns out more and more of it. Do I trust any of the functionaries in any library to decide the toss about what constitutes junk versus intellectually important material? Hardly.
The space of the library might, therefore, still be useful for a quiet read, but the miles of shelving and the skills of an army of cataloguers constitute a depreciating liability not a cultural asset. And maintenance of such an asset is not a very skilled or necessary profession. But there is an upside: WalMart greeters might qualify for new career possibilities.
July 19, 2018
"Reading whatever we will, we fulfill a public function, preserving the sacrosanct space of inner thought that is our birthright."
This charming guided tour through millennia of book collecting is of interest to any booklover, not only to librarians who act as the guardians of the temples of reading. From the very first libraries in Antiquity to the digital catalogues of our contemporary giant libraries, we follow the human need to keep track of our literary achievements. It is a story of passion, power and control, of dreams and nightmares, of monumental intellectual construction and brutal destruction and book burning. It is the story of exchange and trade war, of trying to influence the knowledge transmission in the world through the development of new methods of building and maintaining libraries. It is the story of a profession and a love affair with the written word.
The library is a political and social weapon in the hands of ideologues, and it is a safe space for persecuted minorities. It is a threat to tyrants, and a way to display power.
This wellwritten historical account constitutes a splendid journey though time and space, ending with a reflection on where in the library this book on the story of libraries would be shelved. In my digital Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ shelves, it shines next to other worthwhile nonfiction, inspiring to further reading!
This charming guided tour through millennia of book collecting is of interest to any booklover, not only to librarians who act as the guardians of the temples of reading. From the very first libraries in Antiquity to the digital catalogues of our contemporary giant libraries, we follow the human need to keep track of our literary achievements. It is a story of passion, power and control, of dreams and nightmares, of monumental intellectual construction and brutal destruction and book burning. It is the story of exchange and trade war, of trying to influence the knowledge transmission in the world through the development of new methods of building and maintaining libraries. It is the story of a profession and a love affair with the written word.
The library is a political and social weapon in the hands of ideologues, and it is a safe space for persecuted minorities. It is a threat to tyrants, and a way to display power.
This wellwritten historical account constitutes a splendid journey though time and space, ending with a reflection on where in the library this book on the story of libraries would be shelved. In my digital Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ shelves, it shines next to other worthwhile nonfiction, inspiring to further reading!
September 25, 2007
Library: An Unquiet History had such great potential. The collective histories of books, intellectual freedom, and censorship are testaments to man's triumphs and faults.
Unfortunately, this history is told by Matthew Battles, who could possibly be the most pretentious man alive.
Instead of telling the story, Battles piles fact onto fact and strings them together in a loose narrative that never becomes remotely cogent. It comes across as Battles standing on a dais, thumbing his nose, and singing, "I'm so smart! I'm so smart! I work at Harvard! I'm so smart!" Except it's not even that interesting. Every time Battles mentions something even vaguely fascinating, he quickly wanders off on some tangent to further prove how much he knows about the subject. Or, even more annoyingly, he paraphrases other authors, retelling their stories for pages and pages.
Worse than these atrocities, though, is Battles As A Walking Thesaurus. It is one thing to have a large vocabulary and to weave it seamlessly into writing (hello, Michael Chabon). It is another thing entirely to throw out words just because you can, which is what Battles does liberally. I'm a former English teacher and I spent years encouraging the expansion of vocabulary, but not at the sacrifice of good writing. In a span of twenty or so pages, Battles uses the words recondite, ontogeny, fin-de-siècle, simulacrum, quotidian, flâneur, and ²¹³Ü³Ù´Ç-»å±ð-´Úé... not because they emboss the story, but because they're big words. And he knows them. He comes off sounding pompous and smug, not brilliant.
Libraries have a fascinating history, a history that deserves exploration, analyzation, and reverence. Let's hope that history is given an appropriate salute by another author in another book... because this one is garbage.
Unfortunately, this history is told by Matthew Battles, who could possibly be the most pretentious man alive.
Instead of telling the story, Battles piles fact onto fact and strings them together in a loose narrative that never becomes remotely cogent. It comes across as Battles standing on a dais, thumbing his nose, and singing, "I'm so smart! I'm so smart! I work at Harvard! I'm so smart!" Except it's not even that interesting. Every time Battles mentions something even vaguely fascinating, he quickly wanders off on some tangent to further prove how much he knows about the subject. Or, even more annoyingly, he paraphrases other authors, retelling their stories for pages and pages.
Worse than these atrocities, though, is Battles As A Walking Thesaurus. It is one thing to have a large vocabulary and to weave it seamlessly into writing (hello, Michael Chabon). It is another thing entirely to throw out words just because you can, which is what Battles does liberally. I'm a former English teacher and I spent years encouraging the expansion of vocabulary, but not at the sacrifice of good writing. In a span of twenty or so pages, Battles uses the words recondite, ontogeny, fin-de-siècle, simulacrum, quotidian, flâneur, and ²¹³Ü³Ù´Ç-»å±ð-´Úé... not because they emboss the story, but because they're big words. And he knows them. He comes off sounding pompous and smug, not brilliant.
Libraries have a fascinating history, a history that deserves exploration, analyzation, and reverence. Let's hope that history is given an appropriate salute by another author in another book... because this one is garbage.
February 10, 2021
A learned book, filled with tidbits like the making of papyrus, from fibers of the homonymous plant with their natural agglutination, and the British Empire's seizure of the tablets of Nineveh (compare the French, indeed Napoleon's, seizing Roman art ). I admire Battles' humility when he notes that "most books are bad" and "fail to rise above the... confusions of their times (in this respect, I'm sure this book will be no exception)." (16)
And may I say, Battles displays the principal fault of our day's academic prose, which can be improved by replacing flat "is-verbs" with active verbs. (As the editor of a Shakespeare Series for a European press, I often improve MSS with this simple trick that I've taught college students for decades.) For example, Battles' paragraph on p.31 invites this: NOT, "It is this last point--the needs etc-- that determines what survives," BUT, "The needs of private readers determine what survives." NOT "were universal," "were costly," "were the provision...." BUT: " The constant shuffling of the word binds up the fate of books. Despite Alexandria's universally-scoped libraries, their librarians faced hard choices. Manuscript scrolls took time and expense, so scribes' precious labors were not lavished on minor texts. Ancient libraries chiefly provided exemplars which readers transcribed for their own use; they naturally copied in quantity only major works."
But here I cavil, since overall this book provides a fine compendium including the history of civilization and of languages, via their libraries.
I learned a new word, "biblioclasm": for instance, the Qin emperors of China (only a couple) destroyed all the Confucian books they could, one claiming that 460 scholars wer buried alive--doubtful. They began an entirely new culture, they thought. And they were not alone: the Aztecs destroyed the beautiful Mayan manuscripts, then the Spanish of course rooted out the Aztec painted heiroglyphs (prophetic books based ont he Calendar, combining math and art).
Earlier, the Cumaean Sybil's books were burned. (Near her caves I lived a summer at Villa Vergilliana, though I also went to the Biblioteca Nationale Napoletana with its "foot-worn marble stairs"p.6.) The Sybil may have begun a civilization by burning her own books. She offered King Tarquin her nine books for a price, which he refused. She threw three into a fire, then offered the remainder for the same price, which he again refused. Finally, he bought the last three for the previously refused price. (Any author of a new book may learn from her, if the book were the only one in the language and offered to a buyer who's a king.) Sybil's book ended up in Caesar's Palatine Library, which burned when the whole city did, in 64 A.D.
Edward Gibbon had a large library at Lausanne, which he depended on to write his grand work; he may have invented the card catalog, using the backs of playing cards. Melvil Dewey (who himself reformed the spelling of his first name, to eliminate redundant letters) departed from high-falutin' literary libraries, promoted efficiency in readers' lives. (I've always liked the Dewey Decimal system, in its simple clarity, while MD himself was a fellow grad of Amherst College, which used his system when I was there. MD, Battles notes, was a bigot, antisemitic, while all my college friends are Jews, most physicians, surgeon or researchers.)
The last Ch., "Lost in the Stacks," covers early omnivores like Antin and her Boston Public Library--which teaches more from the names inscribed on its exterior than many libraries do inside---and Alfred Kazin in Rm 315 of New York Pyblic Library, with passersby like H.L.Menken, Edmund Wilson, Eugene Debs, even Allen Tate. Kazin for a time read largely on Chicago, even as Chicagoans were developing a literature, Sandburg and others who eventuated Bellow, my grad advisor's good friend at U Minnesota in the 1950's.
Battles ends approrpirately and precisely, imagining where this book "stacks up": Z1019-1033, Prohibited Books? No. Z702, Book Thefts? Possibly, but no. Z719725, Libraries (General). Yes, Z721s, or in the Dewey he despises, 2003. But at Widener as he checks, his book's not on the shelf near his mentor Kenneth Carpenter's. Has someone taken it out already?
And may I say, Battles displays the principal fault of our day's academic prose, which can be improved by replacing flat "is-verbs" with active verbs. (As the editor of a Shakespeare Series for a European press, I often improve MSS with this simple trick that I've taught college students for decades.) For example, Battles' paragraph on p.31 invites this: NOT, "It is this last point--the needs etc-- that determines what survives," BUT, "The needs of private readers determine what survives." NOT "were universal," "were costly," "were the provision...." BUT: " The constant shuffling of the word binds up the fate of books. Despite Alexandria's universally-scoped libraries, their librarians faced hard choices. Manuscript scrolls took time and expense, so scribes' precious labors were not lavished on minor texts. Ancient libraries chiefly provided exemplars which readers transcribed for their own use; they naturally copied in quantity only major works."
But here I cavil, since overall this book provides a fine compendium including the history of civilization and of languages, via their libraries.
I learned a new word, "biblioclasm": for instance, the Qin emperors of China (only a couple) destroyed all the Confucian books they could, one claiming that 460 scholars wer buried alive--doubtful. They began an entirely new culture, they thought. And they were not alone: the Aztecs destroyed the beautiful Mayan manuscripts, then the Spanish of course rooted out the Aztec painted heiroglyphs (prophetic books based ont he Calendar, combining math and art).
Earlier, the Cumaean Sybil's books were burned. (Near her caves I lived a summer at Villa Vergilliana, though I also went to the Biblioteca Nationale Napoletana with its "foot-worn marble stairs"p.6.) The Sybil may have begun a civilization by burning her own books. She offered King Tarquin her nine books for a price, which he refused. She threw three into a fire, then offered the remainder for the same price, which he again refused. Finally, he bought the last three for the previously refused price. (Any author of a new book may learn from her, if the book were the only one in the language and offered to a buyer who's a king.) Sybil's book ended up in Caesar's Palatine Library, which burned when the whole city did, in 64 A.D.
Edward Gibbon had a large library at Lausanne, which he depended on to write his grand work; he may have invented the card catalog, using the backs of playing cards. Melvil Dewey (who himself reformed the spelling of his first name, to eliminate redundant letters) departed from high-falutin' literary libraries, promoted efficiency in readers' lives. (I've always liked the Dewey Decimal system, in its simple clarity, while MD himself was a fellow grad of Amherst College, which used his system when I was there. MD, Battles notes, was a bigot, antisemitic, while all my college friends are Jews, most physicians, surgeon or researchers.)
The last Ch., "Lost in the Stacks," covers early omnivores like Antin and her Boston Public Library--which teaches more from the names inscribed on its exterior than many libraries do inside---and Alfred Kazin in Rm 315 of New York Pyblic Library, with passersby like H.L.Menken, Edmund Wilson, Eugene Debs, even Allen Tate. Kazin for a time read largely on Chicago, even as Chicagoans were developing a literature, Sandburg and others who eventuated Bellow, my grad advisor's good friend at U Minnesota in the 1950's.
Battles ends approrpirately and precisely, imagining where this book "stacks up": Z1019-1033, Prohibited Books? No. Z702, Book Thefts? Possibly, but no. Z719725, Libraries (General). Yes, Z721s, or in the Dewey he despises, 2003. But at Widener as he checks, his book's not on the shelf near his mentor Kenneth Carpenter's. Has someone taken it out already?
February 25, 2008
I love books about libraries. This was a particularly good one. One thing I'll remember about it is its discussion of the irony of the library: you go there and you are simultaneously impressed and filled with the sheer multitude and richness of the books offered, but also the deprivation of knowing that you can only read so few of them.
December 17, 2015
Required reading in grad school. Kinda wish I could reread it every year. So good.
September 1, 2011
More a meditative meandering through the literary world than a traditional history, I found the first seventy pages slow and disjointed (and almost put the book down numerous times). Once Mr. Battles gets to the Renaissance, however, he finds his voice and manages to salvage the book. His tendency to use big, unnecessary words (yes, I get it, you’re smart; now try for clarity) and a lack of a strong central theme stifle the book’s potential, especially because the strongest parts of the book are when he’s concise and not trying to turn the work into some sort of intellectual pissing contest. He presents random snippets of the unending debate about the role of libraries and literature within society and, along the way, presents a slew of (sometimes obscure) essays and books that never would have interested me otherwise. My reading list is much longer as a result of this book, and, in some ways, I think that’s indicative of a book that, despite its shortcomings, succeeds. Quasi-recommended.
April 19, 2018
Life is too short to keep reading a book that I'm not enjoying, so I'm unfortunately quitting this one. It had so much potential and I was so excited about it when my book club proposed it. But it's just so dry and so jam-packed with facts and quotes and just too much stuff. Maybe I would have liked it more when I was in my LIS grad program and was still waxing poetic about the magic of libraries.
November 29, 2016
When I started reading ‘Library: An Unquiet History�, my enjoyment suffered from compulsively comparing it to another book on the same topic. remains one of my favourite books of all time and a little voice in my head wouldn’t stop commenting, “This author is no Alberto Manguel�. Certainly, I didn’t get the same sense of profound and spiritual library-love from this book as Manguel’s, nor did I feel quite the same kinship. Nonetheless, this book covers ground that did not and the two take different but equally valid approaches to the history of libraries.
I began to enjoy this book properly when it taught me fascinating things I’d not previously known (which shut up the little voice of comparison). To pick out a few, I hadn’t heard of Jonathan Swift’s ‘Battle of the Books� and its mockery of ancient vs modern literary endeavours. Nor did I know of Antonio Panizzi, an exiled Italian who transformed the British Library with, inter alia, a ground-breaking cataloguing system and a new reading room, now the centrepiece of the British Museum. I also learned about the agenda behind Dewey’s transformative library innovations, of which his classification system was only one.
The highlight of the book for me, though, was chapter 6, ‘Knowledge on Fire�. Although upsetting, it gave a very powerful overview of book-burning across the ages. Unlike other such accounts I’ve read, it concentrated on the twentieth century. The burning of Louvrain Library during the First and then Second World Wars was a horrifying example I’d never heard of before. I also hadn’t realised that the famous Nazi book-burnings in 1933 were not master-minded by Goebbels. Instead, he encouraged them delightedly once a pro-Nazi student group began the bonfires. I also hadn’t realised that the Nazis kept lists of forbidden books but did not make them public, so the population at large destroyed many of their own books in case they were suspect. This chapter also covers the Bosnian war of the 1990s and the destruction of libraries that took place then, as part of the genocide.
In a way, I think reading ‘Library: An Unquiet History� reminded me of a useful lesson - no one book is definitive and that is a major reason for libraries to exist. Having read an absolutely fantastic history of libraries in the past is no reason not to read further books on that topic. Even if they aren’t as sublime, they can still provide you with fascinating new knowledge and perspectives.
I began to enjoy this book properly when it taught me fascinating things I’d not previously known (which shut up the little voice of comparison). To pick out a few, I hadn’t heard of Jonathan Swift’s ‘Battle of the Books� and its mockery of ancient vs modern literary endeavours. Nor did I know of Antonio Panizzi, an exiled Italian who transformed the British Library with, inter alia, a ground-breaking cataloguing system and a new reading room, now the centrepiece of the British Museum. I also learned about the agenda behind Dewey’s transformative library innovations, of which his classification system was only one.
The highlight of the book for me, though, was chapter 6, ‘Knowledge on Fire�. Although upsetting, it gave a very powerful overview of book-burning across the ages. Unlike other such accounts I’ve read, it concentrated on the twentieth century. The burning of Louvrain Library during the First and then Second World Wars was a horrifying example I’d never heard of before. I also hadn’t realised that the famous Nazi book-burnings in 1933 were not master-minded by Goebbels. Instead, he encouraged them delightedly once a pro-Nazi student group began the bonfires. I also hadn’t realised that the Nazis kept lists of forbidden books but did not make them public, so the population at large destroyed many of their own books in case they were suspect. This chapter also covers the Bosnian war of the 1990s and the destruction of libraries that took place then, as part of the genocide.
In a way, I think reading ‘Library: An Unquiet History� reminded me of a useful lesson - no one book is definitive and that is a major reason for libraries to exist. Having read an absolutely fantastic history of libraries in the past is no reason not to read further books on that topic. Even if they aren’t as sublime, they can still provide you with fascinating new knowledge and perspectives.
May 7, 2010
This is a lovingly subjective account of man's relationship with information, and the corresponding rise of a curious institution dedicated to collecting that information and making it accessible. It crosses centuries and cultures, and the reader will learn of many different perspectives on the power of books and words, and learn to see some of the flaws in those under-girding our modern concept of the library. It includes discussions of attacks on books and libraries, including the (somewhat mythical) story of the Chinese Emperor who burned all books and scholars in order to establish his dynasty as the beginning of Chinese history, the attacks of the Spanish on Aztec storehouses of knowledge, the Nazi book-burnings, and the Serbian destruction of a cast Bosnian library. Alexandria is mentioned, although Hypatia curiously does not appear. We also visit a Synagogue in Cairo where thousands of ancient documents were discovered in a "memory hole" where they had been tossed away, the foundations of the British Library and Houghton Library at Harvard, and explore the way that cataloging went from a means to improve popular access to books to an arcane obsession of experts. Throughout, the book is peopled with compelling historical character and anecdotes from various quarters. I found it to be a charmingly entertaining read.
July 3, 2017
This book is an example of one you need to get fifty pages into before you make a decision whether or not to continue with it. At about forty pages I was ready to give up, but at fifty pages, I started to get interested. You probably need to be a library-lover to want to read this book. You'll have to slog through a lot of boring stuff to get to the interesting nuggets. It wasn't what I expected, which was a history of the U.S. library. It was a worldwide history of the library. Libraries were frequently targeted for destruction as a means to really demoralize an enemy. It's funny how books have that sort of effect on people. The author, who is a librarian at Harvard, writes like someone who works at Harvard. He uses lots of "big words" which I was too lazy to look up in the dictionary. The chapter that was most interesting concerned the Nazis and book-burning. I can't imagine the feelings of the librarians and those who frequented libraries as they watched millions of volumes burning. Some were irreplaceable. It made you want to cry just thinking about it. Books have always been so important to me. It's nice to think that trends come and go but books have always been, and always will be, an extremely important part of society.
July 18, 2012
I think Battles would be the guy in the office party (probably a spouse) who corners everyone who stands still so he can lecture at them. He's from the local university, and he sincerely thinks you're interested.
You wish you were because the topic is interesting enough and you have plenty of things to say about it, but he just wants to recite the bibliography of his thesis at you, and you can't tell what he thinks about it, or get a word in edgewise.
You wish you were because the topic is interesting enough and you have plenty of things to say about it, but he just wants to recite the bibliography of his thesis at you, and you can't tell what he thinks about it, or get a word in edgewise.
November 3, 2018
A thought provoking short history of the contested nature of the knowledge held in libraries. Battles uses various examples and anecdotes ranging two millenium and including examples in Europe, China, the Middle East, and the Americas to show the political role libraries played from macro-level geopolitical conflicts to the parochial intellectual squabbles of the academy. One aspect of this political nature not mentioned, however, is how libraries dictated the importance of books (and other written texts) as the supreme conduit of knowledge over others. In the contest to prove Western man's dominance, libraries were a tool that enshrined written knowledge and looked down on the oral and communal knowledge of those they wanted to conquer, such as American Indians or Africans (two groups rarely mentioned in the book, if at all). While this would have added another layer to this contested or unquiet history, the book is still worthwhile for those interested in books and the history of their organization.
August 25, 2009
I don't know much about the history of libraries, but this felt like a good overview. The focus is on Western libraries, but I also learned about Eastern libraries.
I had no idea that the China had the precursor to the printing press long before Gutenberg.
The book starts with ancient libraries, covering what constituted a library, how books were obtained, what librarians looked for, etc.
There is a gradual transition into competing theories of librarianship, and here the focus is almost exclusively on the West. Is the purpose of the library to get books into the hands of readers? If so, what books? Just non-fiction, mostly philosophy and religion? Is the purpose of the library to guide readers into reading the "correct" books?
The book also covered censorship carried out by the destruction of libraries and book burnings. The Nazi era was covered, of course, but so was the destruction of books in China, the near elimination of a certain kind of book binding in Tibet and other biblioclasms.
It was a fascinating book full of trivia. I just wish it had been written a few years later. I'd like to know what Battles thinks e-readers will do to the library, how one organization controlling so much of the catalog might affect things, and what he thinks of site like and Librarything, especially now that some libraries integrate librarything information into their catalogs.
I had no idea that the China had the precursor to the printing press long before Gutenberg.
The book starts with ancient libraries, covering what constituted a library, how books were obtained, what librarians looked for, etc.
There is a gradual transition into competing theories of librarianship, and here the focus is almost exclusively on the West. Is the purpose of the library to get books into the hands of readers? If so, what books? Just non-fiction, mostly philosophy and religion? Is the purpose of the library to guide readers into reading the "correct" books?
The book also covered censorship carried out by the destruction of libraries and book burnings. The Nazi era was covered, of course, but so was the destruction of books in China, the near elimination of a certain kind of book binding in Tibet and other biblioclasms.
It was a fascinating book full of trivia. I just wish it had been written a few years later. I'd like to know what Battles thinks e-readers will do to the library, how one organization controlling so much of the catalog might affect things, and what he thinks of site like and Librarything, especially now that some libraries integrate librarything information into their catalogs.
December 11, 2012
I was loaned this book from one of the people at work. I was quite dissapointed, I was hoping for an interesting social history about libraries but instead got a rather dry normal history. The book took different approaches to books and libraries throught time. The book wanted to look at the intelectual history of the book, but focused in on rather small areas and didn't do a good job of relating these to each other or greater movements or any of the socio-political things happening in the world at large. It was also Terribly Anglo-American centric. It only mentioned China in context of burning of books, (Qin and the cultural revolution - though after finishing it I noted on the back it referred to the Qing burning of the books instead of the Qin, only a difference of about 2000 years between those dynasties!) and not anything about their great contribution from printing, paper, Dunhuang, and continuous libraries for the past 2000+ years. It mentioned the "huge debt we have to the Arabs who gave us paper, which they got from the Chinese". The chapter about the founding of the British library, and Dewey's work in American libraries was quite interesting. The 20th century looked at governments destroying books, instead of the growth of libraries and reading. All in all quite dissapointing, I'm sure there are much better books out there on this topic.
March 5, 2012
I have given myself a personal challenge to read the books I own. They sit on my shelf at home staring at me accusingly and expectantly. I trot in and out the door with my stack of library books or snuggle on the couch with my Kindle. In my head I say, "I own them. They will wait for me." If books had feelings the books on my shelves would reek of abandonment, insecurity, jealousy. It is time to give them the attention they deserve.
I bought this particular book in 2004 at the Harvard Coop. I was a bright-eyed, idealistic Library Science graduate...and it's taken me 8 (eight!) years to get around to reading it. The book is a bit dry and academic (the author is, after all, a Harvard Librarian) and it's chock full of dates, places, names - more than I care to remember. However, the history of libraries is rich, varied, and, it turns out, quite interesting. It was good to embrace the bigger picture of my profession. It is extremely well-researched (the author is, remember, a Harvard Librarian) and he covers everything from ancient libraries, to Nazi book burning, to mid-east war-torn libraries, - and everything inbetween.
Overall, I enjoyed it and I'm so, so glad I finally read it. I am, after all, a Greeley Librarian.
I bought this particular book in 2004 at the Harvard Coop. I was a bright-eyed, idealistic Library Science graduate...and it's taken me 8 (eight!) years to get around to reading it. The book is a bit dry and academic (the author is, after all, a Harvard Librarian) and it's chock full of dates, places, names - more than I care to remember. However, the history of libraries is rich, varied, and, it turns out, quite interesting. It was good to embrace the bigger picture of my profession. It is extremely well-researched (the author is, remember, a Harvard Librarian) and he covers everything from ancient libraries, to Nazi book burning, to mid-east war-torn libraries, - and everything inbetween.
Overall, I enjoyed it and I'm so, so glad I finally read it. I am, after all, a Greeley Librarian.
June 25, 2019
Battles does an excellent job in his book of correcting numerous notions (pardon the alliteration) about libraries, explaining the early history of libraries, how the concept of private and public libraries developed to prominence during the Renaissance and later Neo-Classical period, how Dewey established the Dewey decimal system and created the “ideal� of the library that currently exists, and finally ends with the rise of industrialization and how the mass production of books created new implications for libraries in general. And all of this, it should be noted, is written in readable language. Rather than taking a theoretical or “academic� approach Battles’s aim is always to simply educate the reader and tell the story of how libraries have changed and altered over the course of their existence, while also highlighting how the society that entertains them and establishes them comes to think of them. It may seem strange to observe that, but the way a society views libraries matters a great deal to how they operate.
If the reader would like to read my full review they can follow the link below to my site White Tower Musings:
If the reader would like to read my full review they can follow the link below to my site White Tower Musings:
April 30, 2016
So dry it was a terrible slog just to finish. Towards the end there is some interesting information about targeting of libraries in various 20th century conflicts. Book was not what I was expecting.
February 1, 2017
Loved it! Learned so much! =)
July 14, 2019
Ein erhellendes und gut geschriebenes Buch über Bibliotheken und ihre Geschichte. Der Originaltitel "A Inquiet History" kündigt es schon an. Die Geschichte der Bibliotheken ist keineswegs ohne Dramatik und sehr bewegt. Auch weil sie nicht nur von nüchternen Überlegungen bestimmt wird, sondern auch von Leidenschaften. Und natürlich sind Bibliotheken auch durch die Zeiten Bedrohungen ausgesetzt werden. Dieses Buch hat mich aber nicht ganz befriedigt. Es hätte für mich wesentlich umfangreicher sein können.
February 27, 2022
Well written as well as informative, so a very enjoyable read. It is clear that we are reading the work of someone for whom this is a passion as well as a way of life. I particularly liked the approach of the battle grounds within which libraries have existed, and the conflicting impulses surrounding them. It was good to think again of what has been lost and the impact that had on what, often by chance, survived through the generations of thought and consequently had an impact on the development of thought.
January 16, 2012
In Library: An Unquiet History, Matthew Battles attempts to do something that, to a great many people, may seem nearly impossible: He attempts to make the history of libraries interesting, and surprisingly, he mostly succeeds. Writing with great free-flowing flare, he turns this book into a journalistic endeavor that borders on narrative and takes the reader on a journey from the times of ancient Mesopotamia to the twenty-first century, doing so in a concise and relatively brief manner, which does well to maintain the readers interest in a subject that some would most likely find to be drudgery.
Ironically, however, this quality that makes the book so readable, can also be viewed as one of the book’s greater flaws, and to be honest, this reviewer has not quite decided how he feels about it. The phrase “borders on narrative� was chosen intentionally, as the use of this devise is sometimes inconsistent. The discussion of history, though generally chronological (but not always), jumps around a bit in terms of geography, shifting from ancient Egypt to China to Renaissance Italy to the rise of Islam to France to England to the U.S., sometimes in the same chapter. It is understandable that this can be necessary for the author to thoroughly discuss certain themes, but the manner in which it is done sacrifices the reader’s ability to get thoroughly engrossed in a subject. All in all, it gives the book a feeling of a lack of focus. The greatest level of focus is exemplified in, among others, the discussion of Jonathan Swift's satire "The Battle of the Books", which supports the author’s point but perhaps lends itself too much to recapitulation and heavy quotation.
Despite this, Library is a fast read and does well to give the reader a glimpse into a world that he or she may not normally have explored. In the first chapter of the book, Battles states, "What I'm looking for are points of transformation, those moments where readers, authors, and librarians question the meaning of the library itself,� and he explores this avenue well, making this work more of a theoretical piece than an historical one, but perhaps that is its greatest asset. That said, it may have benefited from better presentation, perhaps as a series of more focused essays rather than an attempted cohesive narrative.
Ironically, however, this quality that makes the book so readable, can also be viewed as one of the book’s greater flaws, and to be honest, this reviewer has not quite decided how he feels about it. The phrase “borders on narrative� was chosen intentionally, as the use of this devise is sometimes inconsistent. The discussion of history, though generally chronological (but not always), jumps around a bit in terms of geography, shifting from ancient Egypt to China to Renaissance Italy to the rise of Islam to France to England to the U.S., sometimes in the same chapter. It is understandable that this can be necessary for the author to thoroughly discuss certain themes, but the manner in which it is done sacrifices the reader’s ability to get thoroughly engrossed in a subject. All in all, it gives the book a feeling of a lack of focus. The greatest level of focus is exemplified in, among others, the discussion of Jonathan Swift's satire "The Battle of the Books", which supports the author’s point but perhaps lends itself too much to recapitulation and heavy quotation.
Despite this, Library is a fast read and does well to give the reader a glimpse into a world that he or she may not normally have explored. In the first chapter of the book, Battles states, "What I'm looking for are points of transformation, those moments where readers, authors, and librarians question the meaning of the library itself,� and he explores this avenue well, making this work more of a theoretical piece than an historical one, but perhaps that is its greatest asset. That said, it may have benefited from better presentation, perhaps as a series of more focused essays rather than an attempted cohesive narrative.
March 27, 2013
The history of the written word, how it is stored, and how it is shared among populations could/should make for a fascinating story that parallels the growth of humanity. Unfortunately, Matthew Battles does not tell that story. Instead, he tells a few stories of libraries he thinks are significant (mostly in the colonial US and England) in incredibly tedious detail. Omitted are the cultures of education and democracy around the world and how they are seen through libraries (unless they burn books). Kept are what appear to be discarded chapters from a dissertation on his particular views on libraries. What the reader gets is a cherry-picked tale of wealthy eccentrics that created, really, two libraries at two of the world's most exclusive universities (Harvard and Oxford) that makes no narrative or logical sense and includes so much useless detail that it is antagonistic. This subject deserves greater care and thought from a global perspective than what you get here. Snobby, navel-gazing, and fairly uninformative - read anything else.
September 25, 2013
Battles' book was a biblioclasm unto itself.
At times, I was impressed with some of the sentences he threw together (see: "regulated by the cyclopean manifestation of monotony, the clock on the wall). The rest of my read, though, was interspersed with more than enough unnecessarily pretentious words to make much of the text nearly incoherent. It felt like a high school student was checking a thesaurus every second sentence to impress his English teacher.
The larger blocks of text were further rendered unintelligible. There were a few instances within the book where I felt like I was in a dream: I was reading a passage and stopped to think about it, and realized that I had no idea how I got there. Consecutive paragraphs were sometimes only tangentially linked by the broader theme of the book.
I wanted to learn a lot from this book, and I think I could have had it been written in a better way; however, the most I came out of it with were a few fun facts and a slight aversion to libraries for fear of death in a fire.
At times, I was impressed with some of the sentences he threw together (see: "regulated by the cyclopean manifestation of monotony, the clock on the wall). The rest of my read, though, was interspersed with more than enough unnecessarily pretentious words to make much of the text nearly incoherent. It felt like a high school student was checking a thesaurus every second sentence to impress his English teacher.
The larger blocks of text were further rendered unintelligible. There were a few instances within the book where I felt like I was in a dream: I was reading a passage and stopped to think about it, and realized that I had no idea how I got there. Consecutive paragraphs were sometimes only tangentially linked by the broader theme of the book.
I wanted to learn a lot from this book, and I think I could have had it been written in a better way; however, the most I came out of it with were a few fun facts and a slight aversion to libraries for fear of death in a fire.
February 20, 2016
This probably should have been a long article. There is some fluff and belaboring of points (e.g. Jonathan Swift's Battle of the Books in chapter 4). I've read long, mostly academic, books on libraries and loved them, and I did get some neat tidbits out of this one, but it never really felt full or deep enough to justify its length.
As I said, the neat tidbits were fun. I enjoyed reading about the Ptolemies in Egypt, who confiscated all books of visitors to Alexandria. They were taken to the library, copied and sometimes the originals were kept (p. 29). This helped increase the library's holdings. Battles also suggests the possibility that the hoarding of these texts may have contributed to the loss of so many ancient works. Had they been in private hands or in other locations, they might have survived longer (p. 31). I really enjoyed the description of an early Vatican book organization system, with sacred books and profane books laid out on tables in a specific relation to each other (pp. 78-79).
As I said, the neat tidbits were fun. I enjoyed reading about the Ptolemies in Egypt, who confiscated all books of visitors to Alexandria. They were taken to the library, copied and sometimes the originals were kept (p. 29). This helped increase the library's holdings. Battles also suggests the possibility that the hoarding of these texts may have contributed to the loss of so many ancient works. Had they been in private hands or in other locations, they might have survived longer (p. 31). I really enjoyed the description of an early Vatican book organization system, with sacred books and profane books laid out on tables in a specific relation to each other (pp. 78-79).
September 9, 2009
Reference and entertaining writing are very rarely married to each other in such an informative and well worded way. This book is a brief history of all libraries everywhere from three parts of the world and how the libraries were shaped by the culture and how the culture was shaped by the libraries. Not surprisingly there are a great many stories built up around the room where stories are held and Battles looks at them all from his high and lofty Harvard library perch. Ironically, not found in any libraries.
February 21, 2013
I think... I think on second reading I would rate this book higher, but right now I need to chew over what it said. It's very dense, rewarding but difficult to plow through, and definitely not for the faint of heart or anyone not interested in libraries. It does have quite a few funny anecdotes, although it's hard to get to them.
I think that if I want to really enjoy the book, I need to get my own copy and underline things, and take a couple of months to get through it. I will say more when I understand this book better.
I think that if I want to really enjoy the book, I need to get my own copy and underline things, and take a couple of months to get through it. I will say more when I understand this book better.
February 21, 2017
I got ~60 pages in which is at least 40 pages more than I thought I would get after reading the first page.
The book is basically one big knowledge bomb without any coherent structure or arch. It meanders from fact to fact with pretentious hard to read wording and indecipherable points about how libraries have evolved.
It would be interesting if it had any sort of structure and wasn't written like an undergrad trying to impress and confound their peers. Don't waste your time.
The book is basically one big knowledge bomb without any coherent structure or arch. It meanders from fact to fact with pretentious hard to read wording and indecipherable points about how libraries have evolved.
It would be interesting if it had any sort of structure and wasn't written like an undergrad trying to impress and confound their peers. Don't waste your time.
August 7, 2011
I have to say, this was a disappointment.
I was expecting an interesting history of libraries and perhaps some history of books, and to be truthful, there are some interesting tidbits of information. Unfortunately, they are few and far between, and hidden among frustratingly boring paragraphs. For me it was too much of an uphill struggle and I had to abandon it halfway through.
I was expecting an interesting history of libraries and perhaps some history of books, and to be truthful, there are some interesting tidbits of information. Unfortunately, they are few and far between, and hidden among frustratingly boring paragraphs. For me it was too much of an uphill struggle and I had to abandon it halfway through.
August 26, 2013
I've fallen behind on my reviews -- about 42 books behind -- so the three stars represents the fact that the book dregs up positive feelings, but no content, sort of like a library, where a lot is contained, but little is ingested. Maybe that is the plight of all bibliophiles and libraries -- no matter how hard we try and cram our shelves or minds, the parts that remain always seem so small.
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