Second Anglo-German seminar on library history, London, September 1996
Conference theme
The 'universal library' has long been a dream of literate societies. The idea that it might be possible to assemble a collection of texts in which all human knowledge was contained had obvious appeal for tyrants, democrats, and scholars alike. The unprecedented creation of the Ptolemaic library at Alexandria, embracing hundreds of thousands of texts reflecting as wide as possible a circle of languages and cultures, has given us a paradigm. In this second Anglo-German seminar on library history held in London in September 1996, scholars and librarians examined different aspects of the tradition, ranging from Alexandria itself, through Renaissance humanism to the internet, that possible precursor of a global electronic library.
Résumés of the conference papers can be found below. The full text of several of the papers appeared as a separate issue of Library History, 14(2), November 1998. The conference programme also included visits to the Sir John Soane's Museum and the British Library at the British Museum (followed by a reception in Sir Anthony Panizzi's former office). It ended with a guided walk through Spitalfields and a visit to the German Lutheran Church of St George's, Whitechapel (1762-63). The British Library in 1997 acquired the remarkable St George's Church Library, and a catalogue is currently in preparation by Dorothea Miehe (British Library), a committee member of the Library History Group.
The conference was organised by the Library Association's Library History Group in association with the Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreis für Bibliotheksgeschichte. The LHG and the Arbeitskreis should like the thank the following organisations for their generous support:
The German Historical Institute, London
The British Council
Chadwyck-Healey Ltd
The Library Services Trust
Programme
Uwe Jochum (Universitätsbibliothek Konstanz), The Alexandrian library and its aftermath
The library of the Museion in Alexandria is generally regarded as the first universal library. However, a look at the few authenticated facts will show how questionable such a characterisation is. The universality of the Library of the Museion seems to have its roots in the stories that are told about it and the most famous of which is one about the destruction of the library. The fact that this story as well as some others that are told about this library hardly stand up to close examination is to be seen rather as a peculiar characteristic than as a defect. Ever since philology emerged at the Alexandrian Library, we communicate by our history and by our stories, by doing philology (or by having to do philology). Therefore, the universality of the library of the Museion might be based on the fact that it has to be viewed as a library phenomenon which was preserved in the collections of many libraries.
Antonio Manfredi (Biblioteca Vaticana, Rome), The universal library in the humanist period: the papal library of Nicholas V
Did the humanists have an idea of a universal library? We can gain one positive answer from the new concept of the book which was circulating in Italy during the humanistic period: the rediscovery of the classics, the reordering of the discipline of study, a change in the production of the book and the birth of the notion of a public library.
A second response can be obtained by examining the particular example of the Vatican library of Nicholas V. Vespasiano da Basticci, his bibliographer, gives a clear picture of a universal library, particularly when he speaks of that founded at Rome by the humanist pope. Two characteristics are indicated: the presence of Greek and Latin codices and the completeness of resources (facultates).
The picture that emerges from the study of the papal library of Nicholas V confirms the two themes proposed by Vespasiano: Greek and Latin bilingualism and the presence of books from every discipline. In such a way, the collections begun by the pope reveal a first modern attempt at a universal library.
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV):
The earliest origins of the papal library are lost in antiquity, but practically nothing has remained of this period. The modern period begins with Nicholas V (1447-1455), humanist and founder of a notable private collection which has to form the first nucleus of the present BAV. Sixtus IV gave juridical form to the library conceived by Nicholas V with the bull Ad decorum militantis ecclesiae of 15th June 1475. In the same bull, Bartolomeo Platina was named custos and gubernator of the library. Sixtus V (1585-1590) commissioned Domenico Fontana to construct the Salone Sistino where the volumes, kept in cabinets designed for them, remained until the reign of Leo XIII (1878-1903).
The humanistic character of the library was enriched over the centuries by many important acquisitions: the personal library of Fulvio Orsini, the librarian of the dukes of Urbino (1657), the library of Christina of Sweden (1690), the private libraries of a number of Roman Pontiffs, still in possession of their families (Ottoboni, 1748; Borghese, 1891; Barberini, 1902; Chigi, 1923, Rospigliosi, 1929-1935).
Today the BAV is a scholarly library with large worldwide collections in the field of the humanities, and it also covers, though in less depth, the social sciences. As a member of the URBS network the library carries out special tasks relating to the information infrastructure, library cooperation, library research and the application of technology in information services.
From Gabriel - Gateway to Europe's National Libraries, Vatican City State, The Vatican Library
Klaus A. Vogel (Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte, Göttingen), Universalbibliothek und Universalbibliographie - Konrad Gesners 'Bibliographia Universalis'
The résumé of this paper is not available.
Paul Nelles (Warburg Institute, London), The universal library in France in the seventeenth century
Between the Bibliotèque Françoise of La Croix du Maine (1584) and the consolidation of the Bibliotèque du Roi under Colbert in the 1660s, arguably the universal library in France evolved from Renaissance ideal to institutional reality. However, this was as much the result of an evolution in the concept of the universal library itself as of contemporary library developments. This period witnessed a transformation in the concept of the universal library from canon to archive; as part of this transformation, the library gained a new intellectual and institutional identity. Throughout the period, the raison d'être of the Parisian library was the investigation of the past, whether recent French political and ecclesiastical history, or classical and ecclesiastical antiquity. Thus, La Croix du Maine sought to locate the Royal library within the contemporary historiographical ideal of histoire parfaite. La Croix du Maine's library was a bibliothèque parfaite: a polished monument to the French past, an authoritative canon of French authors.
Nearly a half-century later, Gabriel Naudé in his Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque (1627) directly challenged such a static model of the library. Naudé combined the library model furnished by Parisian robe libraries with a Baconian investigative model, rendering the library an active locus of learning and investigation. Naudé conceived of the library as an archive, as starting point and touchstone for the encylopaedia of disciplines. In part, Naudé looked to the library as an institutional bulwark against contemporary sceptical attacks of knowledge, articulating a new intellectual role for the library as an autonomous locus of investigation. Naudé provided a methodological framework for apprehending the library as an essential critical apparatus of learning; the method of library classification and organisation he developed in accord with this view, historia litteraria provided foundations for the universal library which remained valid well into the eighteenth century. In Paris, however, the robe library, which had provided the foundation for Naudé's model and which had once played such a vital role in Parisian intellectual life, quickly became obsolete. But the universal library - library as archive, library as autonomous locus of investigation - in Paris did not die: the great ecclesiastical libraries (Maurists, Minimes, Jesuits) and the Bibliothèque du Roi in different ways all instantiated the seventeenth-century ideal of the universal library.
Ulrike Steierwald (Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, Weimar), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz und die Idee der Universalbibliothek
Leibniz's philosophical theories and his experience as a librarian are considered to have formed the basis of a blueprint for a method of organising knowledge and are seen as related to the baroque philosophy, or rather conception of the world. With regard to the theories and applications of the Leibniz school of thought, the concept of the universal library - the utopian dream of a comprehensive, systematic representation of knowledge - shall be recast in light of two aspects: first, the focus will be on the phenomenon of the library catalogue and its classification system, testing its suitability as a comprehensive, formal descriptive instrument of knowledge. The second theme arises from the principles of baroque library architecture, exemplified in its exhibition halls; principles that are charged with spatially representing worldly knowledge. This question has been formulated with respect to Leibniz's work in Wolfenbüttel during which he was involved in planning the building of the first baroque structure to serve solely as a library.
In baroque thought, representations of knowledge comprise a global system, in other words, the reality of the world is identical with the evidence of its order. A network of interrelated ideas, this order itself forms a unity. Leibniz's plan to develop a system of mathematics covering all quantitative as well as qualitative systems of order is a focal point of this philosophy. Knowledge and the sciences of this epoch are characterised by a tendency towards formulation, and this formulation - developed in accordance with the cataloguing principles of a library - is equally affected by this pattern of thinking typical of this era. In this context, the model of the catalogue is to be understood as the baroque topica universalis. In baroque thought, symbols are no longer parts of things, but rather represent them. This development is particularly evident in the natural sciences. The more professional the natural sciences become, in other words, the more their descriptive methods are defined and are elevated to the status of a system of rules, the more the natural sciences distance themselves from traditional conceptions of nature. These rules permit rooms to be constructed in which things are organised next to each other: herbarias, natural history collections, baroque gardens, etc. Analogous to this development, the ordering of sciences in libraries becomes autonomous. Classifications are not only a structuring of individual discoveries, but rather comprise a model of knowledge. Baroque exhibition halls and the systematic catalogues found in libraries do not reflect a prescribed ordering of the sciences, but rather represent a system of knowledge. Therefore, at this time the library takes on an aesthetic function. The analogous aesthetic of baroque exhibition halls and comprehensive, differentiated classification systems are only to be understood from the autonomy of its representative character.
Leibniz's goal is a system of axioms from which a functional correlation of all things could be derived. Therefore he stands at a turning-point in the history of classification. In his attempts, the collection which he was in charge of and which can be described as catalogues, show that the congruence of a classification does not comply with a system of knowledge. The inadequacies of tables of prearranged patterns are dealt with using indices and alphabetical catalogues. The spatial organisation of text forms and classifications is no longer of central interest to the Leibniz philosophical theories. This spot has been taken up by the search for a universal meta-language, the ars characteristica. In its classifications, its economic status, and in its aesthetic as seen in the design of the library in Wolfenbüttel, the concept of the universal library is intricately linked to the constructive theory of a universal, complete language.
Graham Jefcoate (British Library) and Gerd J. Boette (Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen), C. G. Heyne and the university library at Göttingen: from 'Universalbibliothek' of the eighteenth century to the 'Sammlung Deutscher Drucke', 1701-1800
The university library at Göttingen was founded in the 1730s. From the beginning it was at the heart of the university's work in teaching and research. Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729-1812) was appointed professor at Göttingen in 1763 and entrusted with the direction of the library, remaining in office until his death. By 1800, some 133,200 volumes had been accumulated, making Göttingen by far the largest research collection in Europe. An article published in 1810 places Heyne's vision of a 'universal library', a comprehensive repository of the materials required for serious research, firmly in the tradition of the earliest library theorists.
The project to create a Catalogue of English books printed before 1801 held by the University Library at Göttingen has enabled us to understand better the basis for Heyne's reputation. It can be shown that Göttingen collected editions of almost all the major works of English-speaking authors in subjects taught or studied at contemporary universities. The whole process from book selection onwards was carried out or closely monitored by Heyne personally.
By exploiting the advantage of generous government support, organisational skill and attention to detail, Heyne was able to build comprehensive coverage of the subject fields of interest to eighteenth-century research institution. It is on this basis that the claim is made for Göttingen to be regarded as a 'Universalbibliothek'.
Heyne's universal acquisition policy proved to be efficient to such an extent that in 1990, almost 180 years after his death, the Lower Saxony State and University Library at Göttingen was entrusted with the task to act as the German National Library for the 18th century. Based on a brief assessment of the first six years of the project Collection of German printed materials, 1701-1800, Heyne's acquisition strategy was critically reflected.
Note: Naudé and Heyne Compared
1. Naudé 1627
"And therefore I shall ever think it extreamly necessary, to collect for this purpose all sorts of books, (under such precautions, yet, as I shall establish) seeing a Library which is erected for the public benefit, ought to be universal; but which it can never be, unlesse it comprehend all the principal authors, that have written upon the great diversity of particular subjects, and chiefly upon all the arts and sciences; [...] For certainly there is nothing which renders a Library more recommendable, then when every man findes in it that which he is in search of ... " (Advis pour dresser une bibliotheque (Paris 1627), translated by John Evelyn as Instructions concerning erecting of a library, London 1661, pp19-20. In the promised 'precautions', Naudé (like Heyne) advises the exclusion only of the most trivial, vulgar or derivative works).
2. Heyne, 1810
Göttingen would acquire, "continually and systematically from the daily accretion of native and foreign literature only that which, in the perpetual progress of scientific culture, was necessary for a library that was instituted with a scientific intention, not after the predilection of individual disciplines, not with a love of splendour, not for the sake of outward appearances, but as comprehensive collection of the most important writings of all times and all nations in all branches of learning [...] As a rule, only those books are sought and selected in which human knowledge scientific, technical or practical has progressed or been advanced, if only by a single step; and, in particular, those works which contain either the sources of systems, or improvements, enlargements, and corrections in form or in substance, and do not consist in repeating, reproducing and compiling what is already known or even trivial". (Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, p851ff, quoted and translated in Bernhard Fabian, An eighteenth-century research collection: English books at Göttingen University Library. In: The Library, 6th series, 1979, p212).
Christopher Skelton-Foord (British Library), 'Universalbibliothek der Trivialliteratur', 1800-1830: Castle Corvey and the distribution of circulating-library fiction in English
If it is extraordinary to consider that the foremost collection of British Romantic novels anywhere in the world was once owned and amassed by a German princess in a castle, how much more implausible would it be if the major gaps in that collection should now consist of German writers and stories about princesses?
The novels market of early nineteenth-century Britain was bedevilled by spin-off titles, spurious reprints, unlikely translations and mis-translations, and books whose subject matter was often the nature of fiction-writing itself. London was still firmly at its centre, dominated by publishers and booksellers who also acted as proprietors of the leading circulating libraries. Fiction renting was as common for middle-class readers as fiction purchasing, and provincial imprints invariably involved a financial risk for author and publisher alike, unless a library readership could be guaranteed.
Research for a forthcoming bibliography - The English Novel 1800 to 1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1999]), compiled by Peter Garside, Rainer Schöwerling, Christopher Skelton-Foord and Karin Wünsche - has uncovered hundreds of novels, whose period of vogue would have lasted no more than a few weeks, yet most of which are still more likely to be found in the Princely Library at Covey than in any other collection. This fascinating and ambiguous cache of literary trivia, once the property of Elise, Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, tells us as much about the development of popular fiction as do the novels that Corvey could never obtain.
Karen Kloth (Münster), The 'Handbuch der deutschen historischen Buchbestände' as a source for library history
The Handbuch der historischen Buchbestände in Deutschland has been conceived as a directory of collections of material printed or published between 1450 and 1900. It covers collections in the whole of the German Federal Republic, including the new federal states of eastern Germany, and provides a survey of rare book or special collections which survived the Second World War or have been built up since.
The directory covers about 1,200 collections in every kind of library: state, regional and municipal, academic, special, ecclesiastical and monastic. Holdings of printed books, periodicals, music and maps as well as all kinds of printed ephemera are included but manuscripts and non-printed archives are not.
The directory has been conceived as a new kind of bibliographical tool for the use of scholars and librarians. It is not intended to replace or compete with a national retrospective bibliography but rather to describe and analyse the holdings of individual institutions systematically in their historical context. It does not deal, as a catalogue does, with individual bibliographical items, but rather aims to describe significant collections or categories of material that reveal the character and strengths of a library.
The directory takes full account of the regional character of the German library system. Each federal state is allotted its own section, places in the state being arranged alphabetically within it. Each region will have its own index.
Every entry begins with a section providing practical information about the library, followed by five other sections. The first main section comprises a history of the library, including the circumstances of its foundation, its development and its present objectivesIt describes collections absorbed into the library and major benefactions. The second and largest section describes the library's holdings in four stages: a chronological survey, a survey by language (including foreign-language material), a systematic break-down by subject, and a survey of special collections. The systematic analysis of a library's holdings follows the institution's own arrangement, providing a valuable insight into the organisation of historic collections. In the final three sections, details are provided of published or unpublished catalogues, archival records and published descriptions of the collections.
The directory is the result of a cooperative effort by hundreds of librarians and scholars. Their work has been collected by six regional editorial offices, including one for the states of eastern Germany, and coordinated by a central editorial office which also provided the indices. The Directory has been generously funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.
Parallel directories covering Austria and holdings of German books in other selected European libraries are in preparation, also funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.
Isle Sternberg (London), Oh! To have been a fly on the wall: Panizzi, his precursors and his contemporaries
This paper, after summarising Panizzi's policy for the development of the British Museum Library, looks at the early collectors, Principal Librarians, and Keepers of the Department of Printed Books before Panizzi, and then examines some aspects of the development of the ideas of Panizzi himself and of his most able assistants, John Winter Jones and Thomas Watts.
David Paisey (London), Selective universality? The development of the British Museum Library's collection of German printed books in the nineteenth century
In the course of the nineteenth century, the British Museum's method of acquiring German books developed from the haphazard and sporadic to the systematic and selective, based on an ideal of users' present and future needs. From the 1840s to the 1880s, a Golden Age of generous public funding placed few obstacles to the realisation of this ideal, and consolidated holdings of remarkable range and depth. These and other holdings remain selective; universality does not exist.
David Shaw (University of Kent at Canterbury), Canterbury Cathedral Library as an example of an early modern scholarly library
The library of the Benedictine Priory of Christ Church at Canterbury was one of the great English libraries of the Middle Ages. As with so many other Cathedral libraries and the related libraries of Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, the Henrician Reformation and its aftermath brought about a large-scale dispersal of the collections. However, the idea a scholarly library attached to a Cathedral did not die. It is difficult to be sure what of the books presently in the Cathedral at Canterbury survive from this period. The number is not great.
The Restoration in 1660 of both the monarchy and the Anglican Church saw a widespread refoundation of Cathedral Libraries. Canterbury had a new library building constructed. For the next three centuries, the Dean and Chapter have maintained and developed a library which has acted as a public resource for the local and national scholarly community. One of the problems of assessing the scope of the collections in the early modern period is the constant accession of early materials throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The current holdings of pre-1801 holdings of the Library are now accessible by computer and are being prepared for publication. Canterbury's pre-1701 holdings can be compared with those of the other Anglican Cathedrals in the Cathedral Libraries Catalogue (Vol. 1: English Books, 1985; Vol. 2: Continental Books, nearing completion for publication in 1997).
The Canterbury collection contains important material of local interest. Its function as a wider scholarly resource can be seen from its range of classical and patristic texts, its philological and encyclopaedic holdings, and in the context of contemporary English politics, its holdings of large quantities of controversial pamphlets from the period of the English Civil War onwards.
As an example of the holdings of this period, a small catalogue of books printed in the year 1700 will be provided.
Gerd Schmidt (Hochschule für Bibliotheks- und Informationswesen, Stuttgart), 'Do I dare disturb the universe?'
Miguel de Unamuno's short story 'Revolution in the Library at Ciudamuerta' is a story without a point: a young librarian fails in his attempt to introduce reforms into a rundown library. Because of his frenzied reaction - he starts tearing the books from the shelves - he is called to account before the supreme council of librarians. Speaking in his own defence, he addresses not only the situation in the library but also the desolate conditions in the country. The account breaks off with the wish that God should protect us from such hot-bloods. As a literary product the story is hardly convincing. By enquiring into its hidden message, however, we open up some interesting perspectives: 'Revolution in the Library at Ciudamuerta' reflects the concerns of the so-called generation of `98, which strove for a revitalizing of Spain at the beginning of this century; and at the same time it introduces the idea of a world order, whose conspicuous symbol is the universal library.
Dave Muddiman (Leeds Metropolitan University), The 'World Brain' - H.G. Wells and the modern utopia of information science
H. G. Wells (1866-1946), science fiction novelist, social philosopher and encyclopaedist was fascinated with the idea of the universal library both as collection and network. In the 1930s in particular, Wells developed a plan for a world encyclopaedic organisation which he sometimes referred to as a 'World Brain'. He published his proposals in 1938 in a book of that title, and publicised them through a series of lectures in Britain, the USA, and Europe. These included an appearance at the World Documentation Congress in Paris, 1937, where he hailed the work of the documentalists and librarians whom he addressed as 'the rudimentary framework of the world brain'.
Some recent commentators have been tempted to see Wells as a futurologist and prophet of the information society and the Internet. However, this paper takes a less speculative approach and argues that Wells's significance for what we now call information science is much more historically specific. It examines and attempts to contextualise a much wider range of Wells's output than the 'World Brain' itself. It traces his interest in information science from his early support for the public library movement in the UK, through to his later universalism and encyclopaedism. It notes in particular how his ideas about information came in the 1930s to be closely linked to those of other advocates of social progress through science such as the Marxists J.D. Bernal and J.B.S. Haldane.
An analysis of Wells's ideas about information and libraries reveals a utopia very different to that promised by the internet. Of course, Wells shares with post-industrial utopians a faith in scientific advance. However, beyond that, the Wellsian World Brain is characterised by planning and centralised organisation, professionalism and expertise, benevolent universal socialism and legitimised and classified public knowledge. Wells's information science is based upon, and intended to bring about, the dream of a scientifically planned welfare state and world government. It is a 'modern' utopia of the early twentieth century, and, in the end, it looks backwards to Diderot and sideways to Beveridge rather than forwards to Baudrillard and Bill Gates.
Marco de Niet (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague), The internet, a global electronic library?
Libraries are often regarded as temples of knowledge, which is reflected by the atmosphere in their reading rooms. But as cultural institutions, libraries have been closely involved in some major technological developments. In that sense, libraries deserve to be considered as laboratories of progress as well. In the last contribution to the seminar these two, seemingly contradictory, aspects of libraries are highlighted, and some examples are shown of how tradition and innovation converge on the electronic information highway, the internet.
Only shortly after the emergence of the internet, an environment where freedom and anarchy thrived, libraries started experimenting with the new technology for retrieving and disseminating information from a professional perspective. As a consequence, the rapidly changing world of information and communication has presented libraries with many new issues: How to address 'virtual visitors'? What is the right way to catalogue electronic publications? How to provide access to both the 'virtual library' and the traditional library at the same time, and thus combine the best of both worlds? It became clear instantly that the internet would have a major influence on traditional library tasks, like selecting, acquiring, cataloguing and preserving publications.
In return, libraries can help to transform the internet from a global heap of information into a global digital library. Thanks to the internet, the possibilities for communication and co-operation have improved considerably and libraries should try together to influence the way the internet develops. Instead of more or less passively adjusting to the things happening around them, they should take this tremendous opportunity to contribute to the creation of what might become a true universal library.