Libraries

Abstract

Libraries are an ancient building type. Beginning with the first literate societies—the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Greece, and Rome—libraries have been a constant resource for cultural tradition and renewal. Yet the literature on libraries as works of architecture is much smaller than their cultural importance suggests. Until the mid-19th century, not much had been published on the architecture of libraries. And it is only in the past half-century that architectural studies—theory, criticism, and history—have taken up the building type in its full complexity. There are still many gaps in the literature, especially for non-Western cultures and for all periods before the 17th century. Sometimes libraries—Thomas Jefferson’s Rotunda at the University of Virginia is a good example—are discussed with no reference to their intended purpose, as if the functions they serve have no bearing on the architecture. Nonetheless, there is a growing scholarly interest in the history of libraries. And the best recent studies, whether by librarians, historians, or architectural historians, have sought to understand these buildings in their own right, drawing attention to the interrelated issues of librarianship, book collecting, public service, and design. This article presents works in architectural and art history, history, and library studies, and focuses on works that cover the design and function of libraries. It does not include items primarily oriented to book history, manuscript studies, bibliographic studies, collections, or theoretical issues of librarianship, although some of the entries touch upon these concerns. These fields may be of interest to researchers of library architecture when they indicate something about the purposes and services of libraries. However, the literature of those adjacent fields is simply too vast to reduce for inclusion here.