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In spite of television and the computer, there are still 60,000 new books published each year in the United States. Thety represent a veritable compendium of everything imaginable. The book is said to have salvaged man from the jungle - civilization and social homogenization was the result. Today, in the electronic age, wTe are being drowned in a plethora of knowledge, verbiage and garbage from which no library is safe.
As far back as 1569, Martin Luther complained that “the multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever of writing, everyone must be an author; some out of vanity, to acquire celebrity and raise up a name, others for the sake of mere gain.” Luther undertook the translation of the scriptures with the hope that interest in the great Book, the Bible, would check so prevalent production of new books.
Even more critical was Benjamin Disraeli, Queen Victoria’s brilliant prime minister. He proclaimed: "Books are fatal. They are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing.” What Disraeli forgot was that he contributed to the clutter by publishing six unsuccessful novels he wrote in his spare time.
Thomas Carlyle, however, was more charitable when he considered that “the true University of these days is a collection of books. ”
Libraries have spread inordinately since the first library was founded in Alexandria, Egypt. Misadventures punctuated the history of this library since it was destroyed by fire on two occasions. Its influence was primarily in disseminating religious and political information. With 500,000 volumes (scrolls) it was a depository and distribution point for the whole civilized world.
In 372 A.D., the Roman Emperor Theodosius, a Christian, burned the library in an effort to undo the influence of the pagan scrolls which were extant there. Three centuries later, the Caliph Omar captured Alexandria and burned the library - this time because of its Christian contents. The Koran was the only book needed in life.
This conviction was so strong that he gathered the prominent Arabic scholars of the time and instructed them to collect all the versions of the Arabic “Bible” and write a definitive version. This version now serves all of Islam. Its influence cannot be minimized - witness the religious fanaticism which has recently brought so much grief to the world and especially to Americans.
The book explosion began with the invention of metal movable type by Johann Gutenberg in 1450 in Mainz, Germany. It is significant that the first book ever published in the Gutenberg press was the Bible, the best copy of which now stands in our own Library of Congress in Washington, D. C.
The Library of Congress houses 76 million objects, but less than one quarter of its holdings are bound volumes of
81.3%