The History of Libraries. Collectors. Texts. Buildings

From ancient times, libraries have carefully preserved and transmitted an enormous amount of cultural memory of civilizations from one era to another. But should we understand them only as institutions of cultural exchange? Or is a library a collection of books and a space where they are stored? Can it become a means of legitimizing power, a true political trophy, or a scientific laboratory? The famous French researcher Frédéric Barbier tells the story of these unique institutions from their very beginnings, from the emergence of librarianship to systematic and alphabetical catalogs, from the incredible invention of Gutenberg to digital libraries on the Internet. The ancient library of Ashurbanipal, the Alexandrian Museion, the manuscripts of the Carolingian Renaissance, monastic and royal, private and public - libraries create a special intellectual world with their own rules.