Flip Through This Quiz on Library History

In 1931, library scientist S. R. Ranganathan proposed the "Five Laws of Library Science," which help to promote good practices when operating a library system. Those laws are: books are for use; every reader their book; every book its reader; save the time of the reader; and the library is a growing organism.

The world's oldest known library was founded around 700 BCE by the Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal. The site, located in Nineveh in modern-day Iraq, contained more than 30,000 tablets covered in cuneiform. The ancient writing system of wedge-shaped characters was used to create religious documents, scholarly texts, business deals, and ancient literature. Its remaining contents are now at the British Museum in London.

In 1731, Benjamin Franklin convinced the members of his Junto club to pool their money to collectively purchase books to share. That collection became the Library Company of Philadelphia, which many people subscribed to. The Library Company still exists today and is considered an American precursor to the modern public library.

The Dewey Decimal Classification is a system for organizing the nonfiction contents of a library based on subject. There are 10 main groups with 100 numbers in each. Those numbers are then subdivided into decimal numbers. For example, the history of the English Commonwealth is universally found at 942.063. This system was first published by Melvil Dewey in 1873.

American steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie was once the richest man in the world. Carnegie gave away almost all of his wealth, much of it to libraries across the country. More than $60 million was donated to fund a system of 1,689 free public libraries, many of which still operate today.

The Warrington Perambulating Library started operations in 1858 as one of England's first mobile libraries, or bookmobiles. The horse-drawn cart carried around a hundred or so books to promote literacy and learning among the rural localities of Cheshire, England. In the mid-1900s, bookmobiles hit their peak, with more than 1,000 across the United States. Today, roughly 650 cities across America still have bookmobiles.

During the War of 1812, British troops burned the U.S. Capitol and the Library of Congress. However, by that time, Thomas Jefferson had acquired the largest personal book collection in the United States. He offered to sell his library to the government as a replacement, and Jefferson's 6,487 volumes became the new Library of Congress for $23,950.

An old-style library card catalog typically included three cards for each entry, each organized by a different catalog system. There were author cards, organized by author's last name, title cards organized by the title of the entry, and subject cards, which grouped entries by their subjects, such as history or fiction.

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world. It has recorded a total of 171 million items among its vast collections, including 25 million books, 8 million pieces of sheet music, 5 million maps, 74 million manuscripts, and 17 million microforms. The Library occupies three buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

The Library of Alexandria was built around 300 BCE, a few years after the death of the Egyptian city's namesake, Alexander the Great. Demetrius of Phaleron was tasked with founding the legendary library, which would stand for nearly 600 years before being destroyed by a fire. Demetrius' goal was to collect all the books in the world and spread knowledge from one central hub.