Summary
What was the one weird habit of the Ptolemys that librarians hated? What trick did early indexers use for organizing collections? And what major library lost some really important documents–and tried to keep it a secret? From Alexandria to the Medieval monastery, let’s talk about the evolution of libraries over the course of a thousand years.
(Title source.)
Annotations
Lionel Casson, Libraries in the Ancient World, https://www.amazon.com/Libraries-Ancient-World-Lionel-Casson/dp/0300097212
Special Issue: The Medieval Library, French Studies 70.2 (April 2016).
1/ How was papyrus made? We only sort of know: https://apps.lib.umich.edu/papyrus-collection/how-ancient-papyrus-was-made
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/papy/hd_papy.htm
https://sites.dartmouth.edu/ancientbooks/2016/05/23/67/
2/ Indeed, Plato discusses wax tablets in the context of memory in Theaetetus.
3/ Library of Alexandria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria
4/ Zenodotus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenodotus
5/ Em is talking about the Hinman Collator!
6/ Callimachus of Cyrene and his Pinakes (lists or tables): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callimachus
7/ [36:xx] Just to be clear, people who read Chinese/Thai/other unspaced languages as their native languages don’t read aloud to know where the breaks between words are–that’s a technique for us second language learners. I can’t make any specific statements about the evolution of silent reading in those cultures. –Em
Paul Saenger, “Silent Reading: Its Impact on Late Medieval Script and Society,” Viator 13 (1982): 367–414.
Paul Saenger, Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading, https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=683
8/ British Library. Here are the British Library manuscript collections, and here are the specifics about the Cotton collection.
9/ [46:xx] “Caesar was assassinated about two weeks ago.” Apparently we recorded this just after the Ides of March (the 15th). Wow.
10/ [49:xx] Just to be clear, a codex is what we think of as a book. It’s typical to only really hear the word “codex” when talking about Mayan Codices (like the Dresden Codex–obviously the place has nothing to do with the Mayans and everything to do with where the book is held). But a codex just means a book.
Codex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex (mentions Martial’s praise of the codex)
11/ [52:xx] To be fair, Jews still write the Torah and Megillot on scrolls, but we also have the Talmud, which is written as a codex bound up together with its commentaries (actually, surrounded by them). So Jews didn’t totally miss the boat when it comes to the new technology.
12/ This commentary from English doctor Martin Lister is described in John O’Brien, “Epilogue: Medieval Libraries in the Sixteenth Century: A Dream of Order and Knowledge,” French Studies 70.