The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders

by Stuart Kells

Scholars have noticed a relationship between the availability of writing materials, the vibrancy of literary activity, and the growth of libraries. According to Herodotus, by 500 B.C. papyrus was the preferred writing material on the Grecian peninsula. When Athens imported large quantities of Egyptian papyrus, a flood of Athenian literary work followed and the city’s libraries prospered. Those libraries, such as the great research collection formed by Aristotle for the Lyceum (c. 335 B.C.), were the location for two important beginnings: the inception of Western scholarship, and the creation of architectural features—spaces for reading, writing, and conversing—that distinguish all subsequent academic, monastic, and public libraries through the classical era to the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and beyond.