View source for Library

From [[antiquity]], men had created; at a point they became able to distinguish the creation of ideas ''per se'', and to value the skill of doing this.  Later they learned to [[writing|write]] and, eventually, to write down the ideas (as well as the number of [[ox]], [[goose|geese]], [[duck]]s, wives and peculiarly-coloured pieces of rock or ore they had).

From this grew the '''library''' because what one man could write, another could copy, and the copy could be taken somewhere else without disturbing the information written on it, which meant that people's ideas could live on after their death.  And since Knowledge is Power, one way to get power was to amass knowledge by gathering the copies together.

In antiquity, the 'famous' libraries were at [[Syracuse]] and at [[Alexandria]]; later, libraries became a status symbol for aspirational [[king]]s, a power-house for acquisitive [[lord]]s (both temporal and spiritual) because they recorded what land and wealth had been promised or given to whom, and a source of [[fuel]] in a hard [[winter]].
[[category:books]]