Mobile libraries can be traced as far back as 1850’s England with a horse-drawn “Perambulating Library.”
A similar mode of transporting reading material was active in Washington County, Maryland, in 1905, the first of its kind in the United States.
In 1904 the People’s Free Library of Chester County, South Carolina served the rural areas there.
Another early mobile library service was developed by Mary Lemist Titcomb (1857–1932).
Mobile libraries bring resources outside of the library’s fixed location to users who otherwise may not get a chance to benefit from them.
It also effectively extends the reach of the library’s safe learning and social development areas.
The library concept dates back millennia.
The first systematically organized library in the ancient Middle East was established in the 7th century BCE by Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, in contemporary Iraq.
It contained approximately 30,000 cuneiform tablets assembled by topic.
Ghana
The Ghana Library Authority, established in 1950 as the Ghana Library Board, was the first public library service in sub-Saharan Africa.
The public library movement in Ghana began in 1928, as a personal effort of the then Anglican Bishop Orfeur Anglionby of Accra.
He stocked his house with books donated by church members in England for reading and borrowing by the public.
The work of the Committee resulted in the passing of the Gold Coast Library Board Ordinance Cap 118, in December, 1949, which became operational on January 1, 1950.
It assumed responsibility for the Anglionby Library, which had been started by John Aglionby, the Anglican bishop of Accra, and the British Council’s library service led by Eve Evans.It served as a model for other public library services in Africa.
The British Council handed over its Librarian, Miss E. J. A. Evans, and a stock of 27,000 books to start the public library service.
This volumes of books were housed in a wing of the King George V Memorial Hall which later became the parliament house for the first, second and third republics.
The year 1950 was a significant landmark in the history of public library service in Ghana under the Gold Coast Library Board Ordinance cap 118, which was passed by the legislation council in 1949.
The Ordinance was later re-enacted as Ghana Library Board Act 372.
This Act charges Ghana Library Authority to establish, equip, manage and maintain public libraries in Ghana; take all such steps as may be necessary to discharge such functions; and to give effect to the principles and provisions of this act.
Aside this function, Ghana Library Authority conducts in service training courses, seminars and workshops for school Library Assistants and tutor Librarians; visiting schools periodically to inspect and ensure that employee in these libraries are performing to the required standards; and re-organising school and college libraries and helping institutions interested in setting up libraries in their communities.
A special library in Ghana called the George Padmore library was founded in 1961 and was mandated to collect, process and disseminate the recorded literature, history and culture of all Africa!
It also performs the functions of a national library, since Ghana has no officially designated national library.
It’s a Research Library on African Affairs.
Ghana’s anti-colonial charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah founded the Library in 1961 as the Padmore Research Library in memory of his friend and adviser George Padmore, a West Indian and Pan-Africanist, to support research on African affairs.
Governed by the Ghana Library Board, it changed its name in 1966.
The Library acquires and conserves copies of all significant publications produced in the country and functions as a legal deposit library; produces a national bibliography; and keeps up to date a large representative collection of foreign literature, including books about Ghana.
It has a good collection of newspapers and periodicals on microfilm and a collection of photographs of historical and political events.
It serves as the bibliographic control center for publishers in the country.
The Research Library cooperates actively with other Africana libraries in Ghana in order to pool library resources.
It has an active international lending and exchange program.
It keeps union lists of certain types of library materials.
The Library has an active program for collecting and preserving oral tradition.
It covers not only oral literature but also history, music, and dance, on film, tapes, and records.
Legendary Libraries on Earth!
The Library of Ashurbanipal
The world’s oldest known library was founded sometime in the 7th century B.C. for the “royal contemplation” of the Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal.
Located in Nineveh in modern day Iraq, the site included a trove of some 30,000 cuneiform tablets organized according to subject matter.
Most of its titles were archival documents, religious incantations and scholarly texts, but it also housed several works of literature including the 4,000-year-old “Epic of Gilgamesh.”
The book-loving Ashurbanipal compiled much of his library by looting works from Babylonia and the other territories he conquered.
Archaeologists later stumbled upon its ruins in the mid-19th century, and the majority of its contents are now kept in the British Museum in London.
Interestingly, even though Ashurbanipal acquired many of his tablets through plunder, he seems to have been particularly worried about theft.
An inscription in one of the texts warns that if anyone steals its tablets, the gods will “cast him down” and “erase his name, his seed, in the land.”
The Library of Alexandria.
Following Alexander the Great’s death in 323 B.C., control of Egypt fell to his former general Ptolemy I Soter, who sought to establish a center of learning in the city of Alexandria.
The result was the Library of Alexandria, which eventually became the intellectual jewel of the ancient world.
Little is known about the site’s physical layout, but at its peak it may have included over 500,000 papyrus scrolls containing works of literature and texts on history, law, mathematics and science.
The library and its associated research institute attracted scholars from around the Mediterranean, many of whom lived on site and drew government stipends while they conducted research and copied its contents.
At different times, the likes of Strabo, Euclid and Archimedes were among the academics on site.
The great library’s demise is traditionally dated to 48 B.C., when it supposedly burned after Julius Caesar accidentally set fire to Alexandria’s harbor during a battle against the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy XIII.
But while the blaze may have damaged the library, most historians now believe that it continued to exist in some form for several more centuries.
Some scholars argue that it finally met its end in 270 A.D. during the reign of the Roman emperor Aurelian, while others believe that it came even later during the fourth century.
The Library of Pergamum
Constructed in the third century B.C. by members of the Attalid dynasty, the Library of Pergamum, located in what is now Turkey, was once home to a treasure-trove of some 200,000 scrolls.
It was housed in a temple complex devoted to Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, and is believed to have comprised four rooms—three for the library’s contents and another that served as a meeting space for banquets and academic conferences.
According to the ancient chronicler Pliny the Elder, the Library of Pergamum eventually became so famous that it was considered to be in “keen competition” with the Library of Alexandria.
Both sites sought to amass the most complete collections of texts, and they developed rival schools of thought and criticism.
There is even a legend that Egypt’s Ptolemaic dynasty halted shipments of papyrus to Pergamum in the hope of slowing its growth.
As a result, the city may have later become a leading production center for parchment paper.
The Villa of the Papyri
While it wasn’t largest library of antiquity, the so-called “Villa of the Papyri” is the only one whose collection has survived to the present day.
Its roughly 1,800 scrolls were located in the Roman city of Herculaneum in a villa that was most likely built by Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus.
When nearby Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., the library was buried—and exquisitely preserved—under a 90-foot layer of volcanic material.
Its blackened, carbonized scrolls weren’t rediscovered until the 18th century, and modern researchers have since used everything from multispectral imaging to x-rays to try to read them.
Much of the catalogue has yet to be deciphered, but studies have already revealed that the library contains several texts by an Epicurean philosopher and poet named Philodemus.
The Libraries of Trajan’s Forum
Sometime around 112 A.D., the Emperor Trajan completed construction on a sprawling, multi-use building complex in the heart of the city of Rome.
This Forum boasted plazas, markets and religious temples, but it also included one of the Roman Empire’s most famous libraries.
The site was technically two separate structures—one for works in Latin, and one for works in Greek.
The rooms sat on opposite sides of a portico that housed Trajan’s Column, a large monument built to honor the Emperor’s military successes.
Both sections were elegantly crafted from concrete, marble and granite, and they included large central reading chambers and two levels of bookshelf-lined alcoves containing an estimated 20,000 scrolls.
Historians are unsure of when Trajan’s dual library ceased to exist, but it was still being mentioned in writing as late as the fifth century A.D., which suggests that it stood for at least 300 years.
The Library of Celsus
There were over two-dozen major libraries in the city of Rome during the imperial era, but the capital wasn’t the only place that housed dazzling collections of literature. Sometime around 120 A.D., the son of the Roman consul Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus completed a memorial library to his father in the city of Ephesus (modern day Turkey).
The building’s ornate façade still stands today and features a marble stairway and columns as well as four statues representing Wisdom, Virtue, Intelligence and Knowledge.
Its interior, meanwhile, consisted of a rectangular chamber and a series of small niches containing bookcases.
The library may have held some 12,000 scrolls, but it most striking feature was no doubt Celsus himself, who was buried inside in an ornamental sarcophagus.
The Imperial Library of Constantinople
Long after the Western Roman Empire had gone into decline, classical Greek and Roman thought continued to flourish in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire.
The city’s Imperial Library first came into existence in the fourth century A.D. under Constantine the Great, but it remained relatively small until the fifth century, when its collection grew to a staggering 120,000 scrolls and codices.
The size of the Imperial Library continued to wax and wane for the next several centuries due to neglect and frequent fires, and it later suffered a devastating blow after a Crusader army sacked Constantinople in 1204.
Nevertheless, its scribes and scholars are now credited with preserving countless pieces of ancient Greek and Roman literature by making parchment copies of deteriorating papyrus scrolls.
The House of Wisdom
The Iraqi city of Baghdad was once one of the world’s centers of learning and culture, and perhaps no institution was more integral to its development that the House of Wisdom.
First established in the early ninth century A.D. during the reign of the Abbasids, the site was centered around an enormous library stocked with Persian, Indian and Greek manuscripts on mathematics, astronomy, science, medicine and philosophy.
The books served as a natural draw for the Middle East’s top scholars, who flocked to the House of Wisdom to study its texts and translate them into Arabic.
Their ranks included the mathematician al-Khawarizmi, one of the fathers of algebra, as well as the polymath thinker al-Kindi, often called “the Philosopher of the Arabs.”
The House of Wisdom stood as the Islamic world’s intellectual nerve center for several hundred years, but it later met a grisly end in 1258, when the Mongols sacked Baghdad.
According to legend, so many books were tossed into the River Tigris that its waters turned black from ink.
Ancient Timbuktu Library
Timbuktu’s main library, officially called the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Islamic Studies and Research, is a treasure house containing more than 20,000 manuscripts covering centuries of Mali’s history.
Named after the famous medieval writer and scholar, the manuscripts are housed in a purpose-built 4,600 sq metre (50,000 sq ft) complex completed in 2009 at a cost of around £5m.
Designed by South African architects and replacing a crumbling 40-year-old building, the new institute features air conditioning to preserve the manuscripts and an automatic fire-fighting system.
It is not known how much damage was caused to the building, which had reportedly been used as a sleeping quarters by the Islamist fighters who seized it.
Timbuktu’s famous manuscripts, believed to number in the hundreds of thousands, mainly date from the 14th to 16th centuries, when the city was an important hub for trade and Islamic knowledge.
Often written in Arabic but also some local languages, they cover areas such as medicine and astronomy, as well as poetry, literature and Islamic law.
Many were kept for centuries in private family libraries, passed down through the generations.
The city’s huge and priceless cultural heritage, a legacy of its medieval status as an African equivalent to Oxford or Cambridge, complete with bustling university, was little known in the outside world, with even the French, Mali’s colonial rulers until 1960, carrying away some manuscripts to museums but doing little to unearth the full story behind them.
As outside interest began to grow, in part when the infamously remote city became more accessible, the Ahmed Baba Institute started to collect and preserve significant parts of this cultural heritage, protecting it from damage through poor storage or being sold to collectors.
Separately, a Unesco scheme run by Norway and Luxembourg called the Timbuktu Manuscripts Project began to scan the documents to provide digital versions.
According to reports from Mali, many private owners have sought to save their own collections from destruction by hiding or removing their manuscripts, in some cases burying them in the desert.
Mohamed Galla Dicko, formerly director of the Ahmed Baba Institute, told Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper: “The old pages can be damaged just by touching them. And the people who are moving them are not specialists in handling them.”
Several of the great travelers of the Renaissance, in the 15th-16th centuries, passed through Timbuktu and described it as a thriving commercial center with camel caravans and traders on boats on the Niger River bearing everything from linens and teapots from England to slaves and gold out of the rain forests of Central Africa.
Timbuktu was a university town during its golden age. Many of the universities were operated out of mosques, so you had a lot of books and manuscripts being created for the scholars.
At the same time, you had these wealthy families that valued learning.
Because it had this long scholastic tradition, Timbuktu also had a great literary tradition: powerful Timbuktu families measuring their importance by the books they accumulated on Greek philosophy, poetry, love stories, guides to better sex, astronomy, traditional medicine, as well as the religious books.
They would be copied by scribes and accumulated both in the universities and in private homes.
So huge libraries were created, numbering in the thousands of volumes. Nobody knows how many manuscripts were in the city at its peak but it was almost certainly in the hundreds of thousands.
However, a virtual gallery to showcase Mali’s cultural history has been launched, featuring tens of thousands of Timbuktu’s ancient manuscripts.
The manuscripts were smuggled to safety from Timbuktu after Islamist militant groups took control of the city in northern Mali in 2012.
The collection, called Mali Magic, also captures Malian culture beyond the manuscripts.
It was put together by Google, along with local and international partners.
It features a picture of the dance of the Dogon ethnic group. It also showcases art, such as that of award-winning Abdoulaye Konaté, and an image of builders plastering the Great Mosque of Djenné, a Unesco world heritage site about 500km (310 miles) south of Timbuktu.
The ancient documents were originally written in medieval Arabic but have now been translated to English, French, Spanish and modern Arabic to make them more accessible, which Google Program Manager and Digital Archaeologist Chance Coughenour told the BBC was a first.
“Making a digital record and copy of the manuscripts is very important and for the first time we’re bringing the fruits of our labour after so many years,” he said.
For centuries Timbuktu was a cultural hub on the African continent, as well as an Islamic centre of learning.
The city’s mosques played a critical role in the spread of Islam throughout West Africa in the 15th and 16th Centuries, according to Unesco.
Over the last seven years Mali’s traditional leaders, historians and digital archaeologists have been hard at work to make sure that the ancient manuscripts, some dating back to the 11th Century, containing the country’s rich history are preserved by digitising them.
The project presents an opportunity for people to learn from those who came before them, said Dr Haidara, a Malian Librarian.
The digitising of these manuscripts began with a call to Google by Dr Haidara in 2014.
He invited the company to visit Mali to see the renowned manuscripts of Timbuktu and to learn the story of why they were at risk.
On arrival they found texts which included early Qurans and some with diverse topics including astronomy, maths and geography.
The team then had the task of not only going through hundreds of pages to make a digital record of these but to make them visually appealing online.
Up to 40,000 pages will now be available online, covering topics from biology to music.
It is a project the people of Mali have kept their eyes on for many years since Islamist militants set fire to libraries in Timbuktu as they tried to destroy the priceless papers.
Over a period of six months, manuscripts were smuggled out of Timbuktu to Mali’s capital Bamako, as time was running out to rescue and preserve the documents from near destruction.
In 2016 an alleged member of an Islamist group, Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, was found guilty of intentionally ordering attacks on religious and historic building in Timbuktu by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
He was sentenced to nine years in jail and apologised.
It was the first time that the court in The Hague had tried a case of cultural destruction.
This project to preserve Mali’s manuscripts is not however the first attempt. The University of Cape Town launched the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project in 2003, with an emphasis on “manuscript traditions throughout the African continent”, according to the website.
Similarly, the US Library of Congress has made some of the manuscripts available online.
