The most interesting story about the library. Interesting facts about libraries. Unusual bookshelves

- The largest surviving library ancient world considered to be the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (7th century BC). His predecessors had small palace libraries, but none of them had such a passion for collecting texts. Ashurbanipal sent numerous scribes to different regions of the country to make copies of all the texts they came across. Sometimes, during military campaigns, Ashurbanipal managed to capture entire cuneiform libraries. After the death of the king, the funds were scattered among various palaces. The part of the library discovered by archaeologists consists of 25,000 clay tablets with cuneiform texts. The discovery of the library in the mid-19th century was of great importance for understanding the cultures of Mesopotamia and for deciphering cuneiform writing.

In the Middle Ages, monasteries had libraries with scriptoria (workshops for copying manuscripts). With the invention of printing by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century, the number of libraries began to increase, and in modern times, with the spread of literacy, the number of library visitors also increased.

When the great vizier of Persia, Abdul Kassim Ismail (10th century AD), was getting ready to travel, the library followed him everywhere. 117 thousand alphabetically arranged book volumes were transported by four hundred camels.

The largest library in the world is the Library of Congress in the US capital Washington. Opened in 1800, the library contains more than 75 million titles. To take a fleeting glance at all the library's copies, you would need approximately 137 years of life.

The second largest library in the world is the Russian State Library (formerly the Lenin Library), created on the basis of the Rumyantsev Museum. The library's collection exceeds 42 million items.

For several centuries, scientists and archaeologists from all over the world have been trying to find a priceless artifact - a collection of books and documents of Ivan the Terrible. According to one version, the royal library was hidden within the walls of the Moscow Kremlin.

The space library on board the Mir orbital complex contains more than a hundred books - from the works of Tsiolkovsky to the novels of Ilf and Petrov.

You will not find Agatha Christie's book "Ten Little Indians" in any American library. In America, the detective story is published under the title “And Then There Were None.” Based on censorship considerations, the blacks were initially replaced by Indians, and then by sailors.

In public libraries medieval Europe books were chained to the shelves. This practice was widespread until the 18th century, which was due to the great value of each copy of the book.

Stephen Bloomberg, who stole more than 23,000 rare books from 268 libraries, is considered one of the most famous bibliocleptomaniacs. To build his collection, estimated at about $20 million, Bloomberg used a variety of methods, sometimes sneaking into the library through the ventilation system and elevator shaft.


*The Library of Congress in Washington is by far the largest in the world. It contains about 75 million different items, including audio and video recordings, photographs.
* If we divide all the books stored in the Moscow “public” library among all employees, we get 29,830 copies per person.
*Library workers issue approximately 400 bibliographic references per day.
*The most mysterious library in the world is still the collection of documents and books of Ivan the Terrible. Historians believe that it was hidden or transported to another place by Ivan IV himself. For several centuries, scientists and archaeologists from all over the world have been trying to find a priceless artifact. According to one version, the library is hidden within the walls of the Moscow Kremlin.

* The largest library of the ancient world that has survived to this day is the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (VII century BC), who was not so much an avid reader as he loved collecting texts. Even during wars and army campaigns, Ashurbanipal captured entire cuneiform libraries. Most of the collection of texts discovered by archaeologists consists of 25,000 clay tablets with cuneiform texts.

* Bibliocleptomania is not just a difficult word to pronounce, it is a real disease, which is characterized by an immense love for books and the desire to appropriate library copies for oneself. One of the most famous sufferers of this disease is Stephen Bloomberg, who stole more than 23,000 rare books from 268 libraries around the world. To build his collection, estimated at about $20 million, Bloomberg used a variety of methods: sometimes he sneaked into the library through ventilation system and elevator shaft.
*Abdul Kassim Ismail- the great vizier of Persia (10th century) was always near his library. If he went somewhere, the library “followed” him. 117 thousand book volumes were transported by four hundred camels. Moreover, the books (i.e. camels) were arranged in alphabetical order.
* In public In the libraries of medieval Europe, books were chained to the shelves.Such chains were long enough to remove a book from the shelf and read, but did not allow the book to be taken out of the library.This practice was common until the 18th century, which was due to the great value of each copy of the book.
* To one of the libraries in the Finnish city of Vantaaquietly returned a book that was issued over 100 years ago.According to the library worker, they were never able to find out who brought the book to the library. However, judging by the notes on the inside cover, the book was last officially issued in the beginning of the twentieth century.


*The Library of Congress in Washington is by far the largest in the world. It contains about 75 million different items, including audio and video recordings, photographs.
* If we divide all the books stored in the Moscow “public” library among all employees, we get 29,830 copies per person.
*Library workers issue approximately 400 bibliographic references per day.
*The most mysterious library in the world is still the collection of documents and books of Ivan the Terrible. Historians believe that it was hidden or transported to another place by Ivan IV himself. For several centuries, scientists and archaeologists from all over the world have been trying to find a priceless artifact. According to one version, the library is hidden within the walls of the Moscow Kremlin.

* The largest library of the ancient world that has survived to this day is the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (VII century BC), who was not so much an avid reader as he loved collecting texts. Even during wars and army campaigns, Ashurbanipal captured entire cuneiform libraries. Most of the collection of texts discovered by archaeologists consists of 25,000 clay tablets with cuneiform texts.

* Bibliocleptomania is not just a difficult word to pronounce, it is a real disease, which is characterized by an immense love for books and the desire to appropriate library copies for oneself. One of the most famous sufferers of this disease is Stephen Bloomberg, who stole more than 23,000 rare books from 268 libraries around the world. To build his collection, estimated at about $20 million, Bloomberg used a variety of methods: sometimes he sneaked into the library through ventilation system and elevator shaft.
*Abdul Kassim Ismail- the great vizier of Persia (10th century) was always near his library. If he went somewhere, the library “followed” him. 117 thousand book volumes were transported by four hundred camels. Moreover, the books (i.e. camels) were arranged in alphabetical order.
* In public In the libraries of medieval Europe, books were chained to the shelves.Such chains were long enough to remove a book from the shelf and read, but did not allow the book to be taken out of the library.This practice was common until the 18th century, which was due to the great value of each copy of the book.
* To one of the libraries in the Finnish city of Vantaaquietly returned a book that was issued over 100 years ago.According to the library worker, they were never able to find out who brought the book to the library. However, judging by the notes on the inside cover, the book was last officially issued in the beginning of the twentieth century.

Source: http://books.tmel.ru/

Some facts about libraries and people's relationship with books are simply amazing.

Fact 1.

The Library of Congress in Washington is by far the largest in the world. It contains about 75 million different items, including audio and video recordings, photographs. To get acquainted with at least a third of the literature stored in the library, a lifetime is not enough.

Fact 2.

IN THE USA more public libraries than McDonald's.

Fact 3.

If we divide all the books stored in the Moscow “public” library by all employees, we get 29,830 copies per person.

Fact 4.

The largest library of the ancient world that has survived to this day is the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (VII century BC), who was not so much an avid reader as he loved collecting texts. Even during wars and army campaigns, Ashurbanipal captured entire cuneiform libraries. Most of the collection of texts discovered by archaeologists consists of 25,000 clay tablets with cuneiform texts.

Fact 5.

Stephen Bloomberg

Bibliocleptomania is not just a difficult word to pronounce. This is a real disease, which is characterized by an immense love for books and the desire to appropriate library copies for oneself. One of the most famous representatives afflicted with this disease, Steven Bloomberg, stole more than 23,000 rare books from 268 libraries in different parts of the world. To build his collection, estimated at about $20 million, Bloomberg used a variety of methods, sometimes sneaking into the library through the ventilation system and elevator shaft.

Fact 6.

Abdul Qassim Ismail - the great vizier of Persia (10th century) was always near his library. If he went somewhere, the library “followed” him. 117 thousand book volumes were transported by four hundred camels. Moreover, the books (i.e. camels) were arranged in alphabetical order.

Fact 7.

IN high-ranking an FBI agent posted a secret internal manual detailing the Bureau's interrogation procedures in Library of Congress, where any person with library cardcan read it.

Fact 8.

Library of Alexandria

IN Ancient Egypt all ships visiting the city of Alexandria were required to deposit their books in the library for copying. The original remained in the library, and the copy was returned to the owner.

Fact 9.

There are some kind of ghost libraries, the existence of which is known for certain, but their location can only be guessed at. One of the most mysterious collections of books is the library of Ivan the Terrible. According to one version, the library is hidden within the walls of the Moscow Kremlin.

Fact 10.

When the movie Groundhog Day came out, Washington Post wrote that "the film will never included to the Library of Congress". In 2006 the film was selected National Council to save in US Library of Congress.

Fact 11

There are libraries where you can call a person as a live books and listen to his stories. There are 150 such libraries in the world.

Fact 12.

In some German cities There is public "art libraries" where you pay up to five euros and take paintings and sculptures local artists to admire them in own home for several months.

Fact 13.

When you post book in Norway, Norwegian government buys 1000 copies of your book and distributes them across all libraries in the country.

Fact 14.

At the age of 9, Ron McNair (the African-American astronaut who died in the Challenger explosion in 1986) refused to leave the segregated Lake City public library because his books were being searched. After the police and his mother were called, he was allowed to take books from the library that now bears his name.

Fact 15.

In public libraries in medieval Europe, books were chained to the shelves. Such chains were long enough to remove a book from the shelf and read, but did not allow the book to be taken out of the library. This practice was widespread until the 18th century, due to the great value of each copy of the book.

Fact 16.

All books in the US Library of Congress in digital form occupy only 15 terabytes.

Fact 17.

IN THE USA public libraries became one of the first institutions of racial integration because whites in general did not mind reading in the same room as people of color. Some of them were I’m even ashamed of the time when libraries were divided.

Fact 18.

One of the most prominent examples of philanthropy was industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who founded 2,509 libraries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries throughout the English-speaking world, including the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand. Of these, 1,679 were built in the United States. Carnegie spent more than $55 million of his fortune on libraries alone and is therefore often referred to as the "patron saint of libraries."

Fact 19.

Haskell - b free library built on AmericanCanadian border. Exiting the library through the opposite entrance requires a mark on country customs in the future.

Fact 20.

124500 square feet former Walmart building in McAllen, Texas were converted into the largest one-story public library in the United States.

Fact 22.

Beinecke - library rare books and manuscripts Yale University has no windows because its walls are made from translucent marble.

Fact 23.

IN airport Schiphol has a library in Amsterdam (opened in 2010), Where you can borrow books in a trip "on parole". Not available in the library book return dates and librarians. If a passenger wants to keep a book, the airport simply asks to leave another book in return.

Fact 24.

A book handed out over 100 years ago was quietly returned to one of the libraries in the Finnish city of Vantaa. According to the library worker, they were never able to find out who brought the book to the library. However, judging by the notes on the inside cover, the book was last officially issued at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Fact 25.

In Norway you can return book from the library anywhere in the country no matter where you got it.

Fact 26.

Majority major American libraries (public or private) are federal depositories. It means that they are required by law to provide you with access to the library and computer access, regardless your his social status if you want to see your documents.

Fact 27.

Auckland Library in California it's called "Library of tools lending" and contains 3,500 instruments.

Fact 28.

Fact 29.

In the 17th century, Nicolas Grollier de Servier came up with a machine to speed up the reading of books: a kind of mill wheel with book stands instead of blades, on which several books were simultaneously placed, open to the required pages.

Fact 30.

Napoleon read at a speed of two thousand words per minute. Balzac read a two hundred page novel in half an hour. M. Gorky read at a speed of four thousand words per minute. T. Edison read 2-3 lines at once, memorizing the text in almost pages thanks to maximum concentration.


- The first information about libraries dates back to the time of the existence of Sumer (3000 BC). Books and tablets were then stored in clay jars. On each shelf there was a clay “label”, the size of a little finger, with the name of the branch of knowledge. The safety of the funds was helped by a formidable warning: “Whoever dares to take away these tables: let him punish Ashur and Belit with his anger, and his name and his heirs will forever be consigned to oblivion in this country.”

In the library of the Alexandria Museum, founded in the 3rd century BC. e. King of Egypt Ptolemy I, for the first time, a system of cataloging and arranging books, created by the scientist and poet Kalimakh, was implemented. Over the years, Archimedes, “Copernicus of Antiquity” - Aristarchus of Samos, physician Herophilus of Chalcedon, astronomers Hipparchus and Claudius Ptolemy, mathematician Euclid, philologist Zenodotus - worked in the library. Scientist Erastophenes - founder geographical science and the first compiler of the world map served in this library for 40 years.

Mark Antony in 43 BC e. donated the Pergamon Library to the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra. It was truly a royal gift!

In the Arab Caliphate, libraries were called “houses of wisdom.” Before entering the library, the reader took a bath at the spring, which was located at the entrance. The floor of the library was covered with carpets, on which readers sat.

The first library in Rus' is considered to be the library at St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, founded in 1037 by Yaroslav the Wise.

In medieval China, the owner of a private collection, Zhao Rong, wrote a treatise entitled “Regulations on the Circulation of Ancient Books.” At the same time, the owners of private collections, Ding Xiongfei and Huang Yuji, concluded the “Agreement on the Exchange of Antiquities” - a kind of book exchange agreement with elements of an interlibrary loan...” ...If he has it, but I don’t have it, or he doesn’t have it, but I have it, then we exchange. We agreed on this."

In the 13th century, in the library of the Sorbonne (France), books began to be chained to specially made consoles. In 1338, according to the catalog, there were 1,720 books, only 300 of which were chained in the reading room, i.e. available to students.

In the 15th century, the Italian Duke Federigo da Montefeltro developed instructions in which he formulated the requirements for a librarian: scholarship, pleasant character, representative appearance, eloquence.

The French scientist Gabriel Naudet worked for many years in the library of Cardinal Mazarin. He was the author of the work “Advice on the Organization of a Library” (1627). Naudet was convinced that “a disorderly collection of books cannot be called a library, just as an armed crowd cannot be considered regular army or a pile of building materials - a house.”

Successfully, from 1690 for 23 years, the famous philosopher and scientist Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz led the Ducal Library in Germany. Leibniz developed the Concept of a Scientific Library and the Classification of Sciences. One of the elements of the concept was the “Book Core” plan, which was a series of proposals for preparing lists of new publications, consisting of their brief descriptions. He also formulated the idea of ​​​​creating a consolidated catalog of the country's libraries. Leibniz did not allow the world to be "filled with paper rubbish."

Great German playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who directed the library for 10 years, stated his professional position as follows: “I consider myself the keeper of the library’s treasures, and I would not want to be a dog in the manger, but I would not want to be a servant in a barn who throws hay into the feeder for every hungry person.” horses" (1770)

For more than 30 years (since 1797), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe served as minister in the small Thuringian state. His responsibilities also included managing libraries. At the beginning of 1798, Goethe prepared a document in which he outlined the requirements for organizing the work of the library: ensuring control over the safety of funds, keeping records of new receipts and book lending, and a constant work schedule. He also introduced a condition: books in a contaminated state should not be accepted back into the library! Privileged circles expressed great protests at such unheard-of impudence, but they had to submit.

The outstanding scientist and mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky simultaneously served as rector of Kazan University (1827 - 1846) and director of the university library.
Writer and fabulist Ivan Andreevich Krylov worked for 30 years at the Imperial Public Library of St. Petersburg. The following people worked in the same library: the scientist-historian Ermolaev, Korf, the writer and philosopher Odoevsky.

In 1876, in Philadelphia, on the initiative of the director of the library of Columbia University in New York, Melville Dewey, the first American Library Association was formed, and in 1887, a professional library school was opened. Dewey paid special attention to attracting library profession women. Until the twentieth century, the profession of a librarian was considered an exclusively male privilege.

On July 17, 1918, a Council decree was issued people's commissars“On the protection of libraries and book depositories of the RSFSR”, which marked the beginning of the nationalization of libraries. Home libraries with a volume of over 500 books were subject to requisition. Even the issuance of a safe conduct to the owner did not exclude the subsequent confiscation of the collection. Department scientific libraries The People's Commissariat has developed a standard of books for the library of one scientist - no more than 2 thousand volumes. The ideologist of book nationalization was N.K. Krupskaya. The campaign was carried out by appointed emissaries. The instructions regulating their activities were developed by Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov, a famous writer.

During the Third Reich in Germany, everything that was created in science by non-Germans was declared unsuitable. Publications seized from libraries were stored in special collections of prohibited literature. In accordance with the “Imperial Law for the Restoration of the Service Bureaucracy” of May 23, 1933, racial purges of personnel for Aryan origin were carried out especially thoroughly in libraries.

For many years (since 1995), the outstanding writer Jorge Luis Borges, author of the philosophical essays “The Library of Babylon” and “The World Library,” worked as the director of the National Library of Argentina. He, in particular, wrote: “I wanted to save from oblivion the boundless and contradictory Library, where the vertical deserts of changing books endlessly transform into each other, erecting, tearing down and confusing everything in the world, like a God in a fever...”

At the end of the 20th century, they wrote and spoke especially a lot about the end of the traditional library and the new information era, although even in the 19th V.F. Odoevsky described a certain mathematical formula that would be derived “in order to attack exactly the page in a huge book that is needed and quickly calculate how many pages can then be skipped without a flaw.”

In the 20th century, one of the most daring forecasts for the development of libraries was made by Stanislav Lem in his novel “The Magellanic Cloud”... “...In 2531, a new storage method was introduced human thought. They began to use trions: small quartz crystals. A crystal the size of a grain of sand could contain as much information as is contained in an ancient encyclopedia. A single Central Trion Library was created for the entire globe...”

Sinister Russian heroine folk tales- Baba Yaga was the keeper of the “library of balls”, i.e. librarian She sat quietly in a hut on chicken legs and gave out works of knot writing to the lost Ivan Tsarevichs - threads with signs made from knots, wrapped in balls. Unwinding the ancient guidebook, Ivan read the knotted notes and thus found out how to get to the place. Apparently, the Tsarevichs were undisciplined readers, because the tales are silent about the return of the balls to the forest pick-up point.

Tradition says that the monk, deacon Grigory Otrepiev, the future False Dmitry I, was the librarian of the Chudov Monastery, lived in the archimandrite’s cell and was revered “as a kind scribe and scribe.”

In the library chronicle, people, events, and assessments changed, and based on the vast experience accumulated over thousands of years, working methods were verified, and library traditions were created. Along with the talented craftsmen who, from century to century, decorated and glorified native land, the librarian has always occupied, and will continue to occupy, a special place, since he works in the field of spiritual culture.