Library (institution)

F

Services for People with Disabilities

Until the 1960s very few libraries offered services specifically designed for people with disabilities. Since then, however, many libraries have made significant modifications to their buildings and to their collections in an effort to provide the disabled community with access to library resources and services. For instance, libraries now serve the needs of the visually impaired with reading materials printed in the Braille system (a system of raised dots that can be read by touch), books on tape (audio recordings of books, commonly known as talking books), and large-print magazines and books for users with limited sight.

In the United States, the passage in 1990 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) led to significantly greater access to library resources for people with disabilities. The ADA provided disabled persons with protection against discrimination and guaranteed them access to public services and accommodations. Libraries complied with the law by, among other things, adding entrance ramps and elevators to provide wheelchair users greater access to library buildings. They also widened aisles in the book stacks to allow these same patrons easier access to library materials.

The Library of Congress’s National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped issues a catalog of recordings on compact disc and cassette. It also lists books available in large-print and Braille editions. A cooperative network of libraries throughout the country circulates these materials to make them available to as many users as possible. Libraries in the United States have also assisted with the development of Radio Information Service, a closed-circuit radio reading service for people who are visually impaired. Volunteers for this service read newspapers, books, novels, and short stories for users via closed-circuit radio.

Modern technology has expanded library services for people with impaired vision and hearing. For example, some libraries have introduced computers with the Versa Braille system, which translates what is appearing on a computer screen into Braille characters. Some libraries also feature a device called an Optacon, which converts print or computer output into a tactile form. To read, the user moves the Optacon camera across a line of print while interpreting the movements of the tactile forms with the index finger of the other hand. The Kurzweil Reading Machine is another computer device that libraries provide for visually impaired users. It scans a book, magazine, or other printed material and then reads it aloud using a synthesized voice. The Reading Edge Scanner can also convert printed text into speech. Some libraries are equipped with Braille printers, which allow blind and visually impaired patrons to make Braille copies of computer-generated material. For people with limited vision, some libraries provide computers with large keyboards, oversized keys, and monitors that automatically enlarge the letters that appear on the screen.

---

---

Some libraries provide specialized telecommunications devices for the deaf and the hearing impaired, known variously as TTs (text telephones), TDDs (telecommunications devices for the deaf), and TTYs (teletypewriters). TTY is the most widely used of these abbreviations. TTYs consist of display monitors and keyboards that allow hearing impaired users to type messages and send them via telephone lines to people with TTY displays in other locations. A deaf or hearing impaired person can also place a call to someone who does not have a TTY by sending a message through an operator at a relay service. The operator calls the intended party on the telephone and relays messages word for word during the conversation. Many libraries also have other special aids and materials for the deaf and the hearing impaired, including closed-captioned videos, which print written dialog on the television screen as it is being spoken.

IX

History of Libraries

Libraries are nearly as old as the written word. The earliest known body of written materials was assembled in Mesopotamia (in present-day Iraq and Syria) more than 5,000 years ago. Ever since then, cultures have established libraries whenever social, political, and economic developments have enabled them to record and collect knowledge. The formation of libraries required the support of political or religious leaders who recognized that historical records were necessary to document, protect, and promote their society’s achievements. Libraries also could not have developed without readers—a core group of literate, educated people who had enough leisure time and motivation to use the new resource.

A

The First Libraries

The Sumerians, an ancient Mesopotamian civilization, collected written records of legal contracts, tax assessments, and bills of sale. They recorded these documents in cuneiform, a system of writing in which scribes (writers or copiers) cut wedges of varying size, shape, and depth into damp clay tablets. For permanent storage, the Sumerians then baked the tablets and placed them in central locations. These collections of cuneiform tablets functioned as libraries for use by community leaders, who generally were the only literate members of the society. Archaeological evidence shows that scores of cuneiform library collections existed more than 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamian urban centers.

Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian of the 1st century BC, described a library of sacred texts at Thebes in the mortuary temple of Egyptian king Ramses II (ruler from 1290 to 1224 BC). However, modern archaeologists have found no evidence of such a library in explorations of the temple ruins.

The palace library of Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, built in the city of Nineveh on the Tigris River in present-day Iraq in the 600s bc, offers the earliest detailed evidence of an ancient library’s composition. Ashurbanipal’s palace scribes produced the religious, literary, historical, legal, and business documents that made up the library’s collection. They produced these documents as clay, wood, and sometimes wax tablets. Over time, the scribes developed a complex system to organize and classify the library’s collection, using tablets of different shapes for different types of records. For example, they used four-sided tablets to record loan transactions and round tablets to record agricultural production. They then placed different types of documents into containers of different shapes and designated separate rooms for the storage of records concerning government, history, geography, law, taxes, astronomy, and other subjects. The scribes further refined their bibliographic system with organizational aids such as colored markings, colophons (explanations of a document’s production), and a subject classification scheme that used keywords in the text’s first line. Estimates place the contents of Ashurbanipal’s library at the time of his death at over 25,000 tablets written in several languages.

B

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece was the first known civilization to establish libraries for use by the popular classes as well as for members of the ruling elite. In the 500s bc Pisistratus, who ruled Athens, and Polycrates, the ruler of Sámos, both began constructing what could be considered public libraries. Most people still could not read, however, so in practice these libraries served only a small percentage of the total population. In addition to the government-owned libraries, wealthy Greeks and members of the professional class established private libraries, as well as specialized libraries in medicine, philosophy, and other disciplines. The philosopher Aristotle had an extensive library that scholars consulted, although historians have found no actual listing of the titles in his collection. Greek scholars Euripides, Plato, Thucydides, and Herodotus also owned significant personal libraries.

C

Alexandria and Pergamum

The famous library of Alexandria, in Egypt, contained probably the largest collection in the ancient world—more than 400,000 items. King Ptolemy I founded the library before his death in 283 bc, but his son, Ptolemy II, was most responsible for expanding the library’s collection. After acquiring remnants of the library amassed by Aristotle, Ptolemy II hired scribes and scholars to collect, authenticate, copy, and edit the works of all known Greek philosophers, dramatists, and poets, and to translate the sacred texts of other cultures into Greek. These texts were transcribed onto one side of papyrus scrolls made out of an easily harvested and readily available reed from the Nile River. Ptolemy II also expanded the building in which he housed his flourishing collections.

To organize and inventory the library’s thousands of scrolls, Alexandrian poet and scholar Callimachus developed the Pinakes, a 120-volume catalog of the library’s holdings organized into at least ten main subject categories. Within these broad subject categories, Callimachus listed authors alphabetically by first name. A mob destroyed the library of Alexandria in the 2nd century ad, but by that time it had already demonstrated the economic and cultural value of amassing large research collections and forging a set of practices to organize and classify them.

For hundreds of years the only library to rival the library of Alexandria in the size and scope of its collection was the library in the kingdom of Pergamum, in western Asia Minor (now Turkey). Archaeological research indicates that the Pergamum library contained as many as 160,000 scrolls, and like the Alexandrian library it had a catalog to simplify access to the collections. The library was founded by Attalus I, who reigned from 241 to 197 bc. His son, Eumenes II, who reigned from 197 to about 160 bc, significantly expanded the library. Attalus III, who became ruler of Pergamum in 138 bc, bequeathed his kingdom and its library to the Romans in 133 bc.

According to legend, Alexandrian ruler Ptolemy II banned the export of papyrus from Egypt because he was jealous of the competing library in Pergamum. This ban forced scribes at the Pergamum library to use an alternative writing material, and they eventually began to transcribe many of their library’s texts onto parchment, a material made from animal skins. Ironically, the parchment turned out to be more durable than papyrus, particularly when several sheets were sewn together to form books. Because of its increased durability, by 400 ad parchment had replaced papyrus throughout Europe as the principle writing material.

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain