68 Fun Facts About Library

Which system, first published in 1876, sorts library books into ten main classes?

The Dewey Decimal Classification, devised by Melvil Dewey and first published in 1876, divides knowledge into ten main classes, each split into ten divisions and ten sections; by 2009 it was in use in some 200,000 libraries.

In the Dewey Decimal system, which subject occupies the 800s?

Literature and rhetoric fill the 800s of the Dewey Decimal Classification; religion sits in the 200s, pure science in the 500s and history and geography close the scheme in the 900s.

The Library of Alexandria formed part of which larger institution of scholars?

The Library of Alexandria belonged to the Mouseion, a Ptolemaic institution dedicated to the Muses whose name survives as 'museum'; the Serapeum was a separate temple that later housed a daughter collection.

Whose 6,487 books did the US buy in 1815 for $23,950 to restock its national library after the Capitol burned?

Thomas Jefferson sold Congress his 6,487-volume library in 1815 for $23,950 after the British burned the Capitol in 1814; his books on philosophy, science and cookery broadened a collection that had been mostly legal texts.

J. Edgar Hoover took his first job at 18 as an entry-level messenger at which institution?

J. Edgar Hoover joined the Library of Congress in 1913 as an 18-year-old messenger while studying law at night; he later credited the job with teaching him the value of collating material, the habit behind the FBI's vast files.

Which post did Carla Hayden become the first woman and the first African American to hold in 2016?

Carla Hayden was sworn in as the 14th Librarian of Congress in September 2016, the first woman and first African American in an office dating to 1802 whose holder also oversees the US Copyright Office.

Sir Thomas Bodley refounded the main research library of which university in 1602?

Bodley reopened the University of Oxford's library in 1602; the Bodleian, as it became known, is one of six UK legal deposit libraries and requires readers to swear not to remove, mark or deface any volume.

Duke Humfrey's, the Bodleian's oldest reading room, stood in for which fictional location?

Duke Humfrey's Library, the Bodleian's 15th-century reading room, appeared as the Hogwarts library in the early Harry Potter films, including the restricted-section scene in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Which illuminated gospel manuscript is the most famous treasure of Trinity College Dublin's Old Library?

The Book of Kells, a lavishly illuminated Latin gospel book made around AD 800, has been at Trinity College Dublin since the 1660s and is displayed in the Old Library beside the 15th-century Brian Boru harp.

The Jedi Archives in Episode II are said to resemble the 65-metre Long Room of which library?

Trinity College Dublin's Long Room, 65 metres long and built between 1712 and 1732, bears a much-remarked resemblance to the Jedi Archives seen in 2002's Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.

Which pope formally established the Vatican Library by papal bull on 15 June 1475?

Sixtus IV, the pope who also gave his name to the Sistine Chapel, founded the Vatican Library with the bull Ad decorem militantis Ecclesiae on 15 June 1475, building on Nicholas V's earlier collection.

Which New York mayor nicknamed the NYPL's marble lions Patience and Fortitude in the 1930s?

Fiorello La Guardia, mayor from 1934 to 1945, named the lions Patience and Fortitude for the qualities he felt New Yorkers needed to survive the Great Depression; Patience sits to the south, Fortitude to the north.

Before the 1930s, what were the NYPL lions' original names, honouring two of the library's founders?

The lions were first called Leo Astor and Leo Lenox after John Jacob Astor and James Lenox, whose collections merged with the Tilden Trust to form the library in 1895; the building opened on 23 May 1911.

The 1984 film Ghostbusters opens with a ghost terrorising the main reading room of which institution?

The ghost-librarian scene was shot in the New York Public Library's main branch at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, though the basement stacks that follow were filmed at the Los Angeles Central Library.

The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, over 30,000 clay tablets, was found at which ancient Assyrian capital?

The library was unearthed at Nineveh, near modern Mosul, by Austen Henry Layard and Hormuzd Rassam in the 1840s and 1850s; its roughly 30,000 tablets and fragments went to the British Museum.

Which famous ancient poem was among the holdings of Ashurbanipal's 7th-century BC library?

The Epic of Gilgamesh is best known from the twelve-tablet Standard Babylonian version recovered from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh; George Smith's 1872 reading of its flood tablet caused a sensation.

How many Carnegie libraries were built worldwide between 1883 and 1929?

Carnegie funded 2,509 libraries between 1883 and 1929: 1,689 in the United States, 660 in Britain and Ireland, 125 in Canada and the rest elsewhere, at a total cost of about $56 million.

Andrew Carnegie's first public library opened in 1883 in his birthplace, in which country?

Carnegie's first library opened in 1883 in Dunfermline, Scotland, the town he left for America aged 12; he also championed open shelves so readers fetched their own books, which cut staffing costs.

Which pioneering subscription institution, America's first of its kind, did Franklin and his Junto found in 1731?

Franklin and his Junto founded the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1731 as America's first subscription library; it served as the de facto library of Congress while Philadelphia was the capital, until 1800.

Which US president borrowed The Law of Nations from the New York Society Library in 1789 and never returned it?

George Washington borrowed Vattel's The Law of Nations on 5 October 1789; the library spotted the gap in a 2010 ledger inventory, waived the theoretical $300,000 fine, and Mount Vernon staff supplied a replacement copy of the same edition.

The record-overdue library book, 288 years, was borrowed in 1667-68 from Sidney Sussex College at which university?

Sidney Sussex is a Cambridge college; Colonel Robert Walpole, father of Britain's first prime minister, borrowed the book in 1667-68 and the historian J. H. Plumb found it at Houghton Hall in 1956, returning it without a fine.

Melvil Dewey opened the world's first library school in January 1887 at which university?

Dewey's School of Library Economy opened at Columbia College in New York on 5 January 1887 with 20 students, 17 of them women; Columbia's trustees objected to the women and the school moved to Albany in 1889.

Melvil Dewey's simplified-spelling zeal led him to briefly spell his surname how?

Dewey briefly signed himself 'Melvil Dui', having already trimmed 'Melville' to 'Melvil'; in 2019 the American Library Association removed his name from its Melvil Dewey Medal over his record of racism, antisemitism and sexual harassment.

Casanova spent his final years as librarian at the Castle of Dux, in which historic region?

Dux, now Duchcov in the Czech Republic, lies in Bohemia; Casanova served Count Waldstein there from 1785 until his death in 1798, and to relieve the boredom wrote his memoir Histoire de ma vie.

Young Mao Zedong worked as an assistant to librarian Li Dazhao at which institution?

Mao worked as an assistant in the Peking University library from late 1918 under its head librarian Li Dazhao, whose essays on the Russian Revolution helped introduce Marxism to China; Li co-founded the Communist Party in 1921.

Which annual reading event did Laura Bush launch in 2001 with the federal library on Capitol Hill?

Laura Bush and Librarian of Congress James Billington launched the National Book Festival on 8 September 2001; she had founded the Texas Book Festival in 1995 and holds a master's in library science from the University of Texas at Austin.

Banned Books Week, launched in 1982, was traditionally held in the last week of which month?

Banned Books Week traditionally ran in the last week of September from its 1982 launch; the picture book And Tango Makes Three, about two male penguins raising a chick, repeatedly topped the most-challenged lists it highlights.

Which First Amendment and library activist founded Banned Books Week in 1982?

Judith Krug, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom from 1967 until her death in 2009, launched Banned Books Week in 1982 after the Association of American Publishers brought her the idea.

How many digits does an ISBN assigned on or after 1 January 2007 have?

Since 1 January 2007 ISBNs have 13 digits, matching the EAN-13 barcode: the old ten-digit number is prefixed with 978, the 'Bookland' country code, and the check digit is recalculated.

The ISBN grew out of a book-numbering system devised in the mid-1960s for which UK retailer?

The Standard Book Number was devised in 1966 by statistics professor Gordon Foster for the retailer WHSmith, which wanted to computerise its warehouse; it became the international standard ISO 2108 in 1970.

In Kenya, a national mobile library service reaches readers in Garissa and Wajir using which animals?

The Kenya National Library Service has run a camel library from Garissa since 1996, the camels carrying book boxes to nomadic communities; Colombia's Biblioburro does the same job with two donkeys named Alfa and Beto.

The first Little Free Library was built by Todd Bol in 2009 in Hudson, in which US state?

Todd Bol built the first box in Hudson, Wisconsin, in 2009, shaping it like a one-room schoolhouse in tribute to his late mother, a teacher; by 2020 more than 100,000 boxes had been registered worldwide.

Snøhetta, which designed the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, is based in which country?

Snøhetta is based in Oslo, Norway, and named after a Norwegian mountain; its 1989 competition win for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, opened in 2002, launched the practice, which later designed the Oslo Opera House.

The Library of Celsus, its facade re-erected in the 1970s, stands in which ancient city in modern Turkey?

It was built in the 110s AD as a funerary monument for a Roman consul and held around 12,000 scrolls, making it the third-largest library of the Greco-Roman world.

Per Plutarch, Mark Antony gave Cleopatra 200,000 scrolls seized from which rival library?

Plutarch's Life of Antony reports that Antony gave Cleopatra the 200,000 scrolls of Pergamum's library; Pliny's tale that parchment (pergamena) was invented there after Egypt cut off papyrus is legend, since parchment was already known.

Which invaders destroyed Baghdad's House of Wisdom in 1258, reportedly turning the Tigris black with ink?

Hulagu Khan's Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258, ending the Abbasid caliphate; the House of Wisdom, begun under Harun al-Rashid and expanded into an academy by his son al-Ma'mun, was destroyed.

Which Argentine author of The Library of Babel became director of the National Library in 1955 as he went blind?

Jorge Luis Borges was appointed director of Argentina's National Library in 1955, the year his blindness became near-total, prompting his Poem of the Gifts; earlier he had clerked at the Miguel Cané municipal library from 1937 to 1946.

Which English poet served as University Librarian at Hull for 30 years from 1955?

Philip Larkin ran the Brynmor Jones Library at Hull from 1955 until his death in 1985, overseeing a new building opened in 1959 and a sixfold increase in stock while writing The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows.

Which Buffy the Vampire Slayer character works as the Sunnydale High librarian?

Rupert Giles, Buffy's Watcher, poses as the Sunnydale High librarian so the library can double as the Scooby Gang's base; Anthony Stewart Head, who played him, was known in the US for Taster's Choice commercials.

What is the name of the kindly librarian in Roald Dahl's Matilda?

Mrs Phelps is the village librarian who guides four-year-old Matilda to Dickens and other classics; Dahl modelled her library on the real one in Great Missenden, the Buckinghamshire village where he lived.

The song 'Marian the Librarian' comes from which musical, set in River City, Iowa, in 1912?

In The Music Man, con man Harold Hill sings 'Marian the Librarian' to Marian Paroo, the town's prim librarian and piano teacher; Meredith Willson based River City on his hometown of Mason City, Iowa.

In 'Time Enough at Last', Henry Bemis survives the bomb and finds a ruined library, only for what to happen?

Henry Bemis bends to pick up a book and his glasses shatter on the steps, leaving him unable to read; Burgess Meredith played the bank teller in the 1959 Twilight Zone episode.

Which 1985 John Hughes film confines five teenagers to a school library for Saturday detention?

The Breakfast Club's detention takes place in the Shermer High library; Maine North High's real library was too small, so the crew built a larger replica in the school gymnasium.

In the 2004 TNT film The Librarian, Noah Wyle's Flynn Carsen must retrieve and reassemble which artefact?

In The Librarian: Quest for the Spear, Flynn Carsen must recover the three pieces of the Spear of Destiny; the Library also houses Excalibur and the Ark of the Covenant, and the films spawned the 2014 series The Librarians.

The 2003 Nancy Pearl librarian action figure from Archie McPhee came with which 'push to' action?

The figure's selling point was 'amazing push-button shushing action', raising a finger to its lips, which some librarians felt reinforced a stereotype; Pearl herself is famous for the 'Rule of 50' on when to abandon a book.

The circular 1857 Reading Room used by Marx, Lenin and Gandhi sits inside which London institution?

The Round Reading Room at the British Museum opened in 1857 with a 42.6-metre dome inspired by the Pantheon; it closed in 1997 when the British Library moved to St Pancras.

Which library holds two of the four surviving 1215 copies of Magna Carta?

The British Library holds two of the four surviving 1215 engrossments of Magna Carta; the other two belong to Lincoln and Salisbury cathedrals. The library itself was created by Act of Parliament on 1 July 1973.

Coimbra's Biblioteca Joanina relies on a resident colony of which animals to eat book-damaging insects?

Bats have lived in the Biblioteca Joanina for centuries, emerging at night to eat the insects that would otherwise eat the books; staff cover the 18th-century furniture with leather sheets and clean up the droppings each morning.

Hereford Cathedral holds the world's largest surviving example of what kind of book collection?

Hereford Cathedral's chained library is the largest to survive with its chains, rods and locks intact; the books are shelved spine-inward with chains fixed to the front covers so each can be read at the desk without tangling.

Admont Abbey, home of the largest monastic library in the world, is in which country?

Admont is a Benedictine abbey in Styria, Austria, on the Enns River; its 1776 library hall, the largest monastic library in the world, has ceiling frescoes by Bartolomeo Altomonte.

The Tianjin Binhai Library's luminous spherical auditorium is nicknamed what?

The glowing sphere at the heart of the MVRDV-designed library is nicknamed 'The Eye'; the terraced shelves can hold 1.2 million books, though many upper 'books' in the 2017 opening photos were spines printed onto the shelf backs.

S. R. Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science end with 'A library is a growing' what?

Ranganathan's fifth law, 'A library is a growing organism', closes the 1931 Five Laws; the first is simply 'Books are for use' and the fourth tells librarians to save the time of the reader.

Which two revolutionaries met at Manchester's Chetham's Library in 1845?

Marx and Engels studied economics texts together at Chetham's Library, founded in 1653 under Humphrey Chetham's will, during Marx's visit to Manchester in the summer of 1845; the window alcove where they worked is shown to visitors.

Project Gutenberg began in 1971 when Michael S. Hart typed in which document?

Hart typed the Declaration of Independence into a Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the University of Illinois in 1971, inspired by a free copy handed out for Independence Day; by 2023 its catalogue had passed 70,000 free e-books.

In which city was the American Library Association founded in 1876?

The ALA was founded in Philadelphia on 6 October 1876, during the Centennial Exposition, when 103 librarians answered a call for a convention; Melvil Dewey was among its founders and its headquarters later settled in Chicago.

Bradbury drafted Fahrenheit 451 on a coin-operated typewriter in which university's library?

Bradbury wrote the draft in the basement typing room of UCLA's Powell Library in the early 1950s, feeding dimes into a rented typewriter at ten cents per half hour; the story began as the novella The Fireman.

The forbidden book in The Name of the Rose is the lost second half of whose Poetics?

The poisoned volume is the lost second book of Aristotle's Poetics, on comedy; the blind librarian Jorge of Burgos who guards it is Eco's nod to Jorge Luis Borges, whose story of an infinite library inspired the labyrinth.

The Clementinum, with its celebrated Baroque library hall, houses the national library of which country?

The Clementinum in Prague's Old Town houses the National Library of the Czech Republic; Jesuits ran the complex from 1556 until 1773, and it is Prague's second-largest group of buildings after the Castle.

Which US state was home to the Peterborough Town Library, the world's first tax-supported public library?

Peterborough, New Hampshire, voted in 1833 to fund a free town library from tax money, widely credited as the world's first tax-supported public library; Britain followed with the Public Libraries Act of 1850, letting boroughs fund libraries from the rates.

Which cataloguing format did Henriette Avram develop at the Library of Congress in the late 1960s?

Henriette Avram led the MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloging) pilot at the Library of Congress from 1966, turning catalogue cards into computer records; MARC 21 became the dominant international format for bibliographic data.

Beverly Cleary worked as a children's librarian in Yakima, in which state?

Yakima is in central Washington state; Cleary worked there as a children's librarian from 1939, and the boys who asked her for books about 'kids like us' inspired Henry Huggins and Ramona.

France's national library traces its origins to a royal library founded by Charles V in 1368 at which palace?

Charles V installed his 900-odd manuscripts in a tower of the Louvre in 1368, the seed of the Bibliothèque nationale; the Richelieu site was its main home from 1721 to 1996, before the Tolbiac building opened.

The word 'library' derives from liber, a Latin word meaning what?

Liber meant 'book' (originally the inner bark of a tree, an early writing surface), giving Latin libraria and English 'library'; most other European languages use forms of the Greek bibliothēkē, 'book container'.

The Załuski Library, opened to the public in 1747, was established in which city?

The Załuski brothers opened their library in Warsaw in 1747, one of Europe's largest of its day; Russian troops carried it off to St Petersburg in 1795, and the National Library of Poland later inherited its role.

The Mongols torched the famed library of the Nizaris at which fortress in 1256?

Hulagu's Mongols took Alamut, the Nizari Ismaili stronghold in Iran's Alborz mountains, in December 1256; the Persian historian Juwayni, who was allowed to pick through its famed library before it burned, wrote that its fame 'had spread throughout the world'.

The 'Library 2.0' concept, a response to the challenge of Google, was coined in which year?

Michael Casey coined 'Library 2.0' on his LibraryCrunch blog in September 2005, borrowing Web 2.0 ideas like tagging, commenting and social networks to make library services more user-driven.

Which architect designed Seattle's 2004 Central Library with its faceted glass-and-steel skin?

Seattle's Central Library, opened in 2004, was designed by Rem Koolhaas's firm OMA with Joshua Prince-Ramus; its 'Books Spiral' runs the nonfiction collection up four continuous ramped floors.

In which year was the UK's Library Association, which merged into CILIP in 2002, founded?

The Library Association was founded at a conference in London in October 1877, a year after the American Library Association; it received a royal charter in 1898 and merged with the Institute of Information Scientists in 2002 to form CILIP.