Libraries, private and public, have long served as treasure houses of culture. The most famous library in the ancient world was the Great Library of Alexandria. That vast collection of scrolls helped make the city a chief intellectual center in the Mediterranean for centuries, until the library entered a slow decline because of a fire and a lack of funding during the Roman period. The emperor Trajan founded The Bibliotheca Ulpia in Rome in A.D. 114, another famous repository of literature and historical documents. From the early Middle Ages onward, monasteries and later universities like Oxford, Paris, and Bologna preserved manuscripts and expanded their libraries. These treasures helped spark the Renaissance and an interest in history and philosophy, which led in turn to the creation of even more libraries and a vibrant interest in book collecting among the wealthy. Here in America, the Founding Fathers also understood the importance of …
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