A well-known fact: if you want to read a book, go to the library, most likely, there you can find the thing you need. Each large (and not only) city of each state has its own libraries. Some - very small, some - a little more impressive. And what are the largest libraries in the world, where are they and what is special about them?
What institutions belong to them
The largest libraries in the world are those in which more than fourteen million books live. There are twenty-four such people on the planet - the smallest of them is the library of our Novosibirsk, the largest is the American library of Congress. In addition to them, the list of the largest libraries in the world includes repositories of literature in such cities and countries as Russian Moscow and St. Petersburg, American New York and Boston, Canadian Ottawa, French Paris, Danish Copenhagen, Swedish Stockholm and many others ... Everyone and you will not list! It is impossible to cover all of these libraries in one short article. We touch randomly only some of this list.
Library of Congress
The largest library in the world definitely deserves that as many people as possible know about it and its history. It is located in the capital of the United States, the city of Washington, and has about one hundred and fifty-five million books and more than fifty million manuscripts.
The history of this library began in the year 1880 thanks to the then president John Adams. It was then that the law on transferring the capital to Washington was signed, and in this law there was an instruction on the allocation of five thousand dollars for the purchase of books for Congress and on the premises for them. Access to this library was initially open only to the country's leadership - members of Congress, the Senate, and the president himself. So it is not surprising that the new repository was also called the library of Congress.
A significant role in the development of the Library of Congress was played by Thomas Jefferson. It was he who, as president of the country, began to significantly expand the library fund, and having ceded his post to the next manager, offered his personal collection for the library, which included more than six thousand volumes - this happened after the British burned Washington during the war , and with it the Capitol, where the library was located. A similar collection did not exist in the States. So, thanks to Jefferson, the revival of the first among the largest libraries in the world began. Next is a little more about the institution.
The main among the largest libraries in the world is located immediately in three buildings, interconnected by a thread of underground passages; each of these buildings bears the name of a person. The main building, the oldest, is named after Thomas Jefferson. At the end of the thirties of the last century, a second building appeared - named John Adams. The third building was named after James Madison, it is the newest - it opened only in the eighties of the last century. It contains periodical literature from around the world.
Speaking of literature. What is not in the library of Congress! Books on law, medicine, philology, agriculture, politics, history, technical and natural sciences ... There are eighteen reading rooms in the three library buildings, where these riches are placed. And from the thirties of the last century, the library became national.
British library
The National British Library dates back to the early seventies of the last century. Compared to the library of Congress, it is still very young, however, in terms of the number of books, it is inferior to it quite a bit - it contains about one hundred and fifty million various copies. In the list of the largest libraries in the world, she takes an honorable second place.
The British Library is located in London. This repository has many truly unique masterpieces of literature. For example, it is in the British Library (by the way, it also consists of three buildings) that the manuscript of the Beowulf epic is located - the only copy in the whole world. The first printed map of the New World is also stored there, where you can see the most valuable manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci - and a lot of other things that are truly exciting and delighting the soul and gaze.
Library of Canada
A very young library in Canada was formed only fourteen years ago through the merger of the Canadian Archive and the national library in order to preserve and increase the documentary sources of culture and history of this country. Replenishment of funds regularly occurs at the expense of various donors, in addition, government organizations also send copies of books that have appeared.
Unlike the above repositories, the Canadian archive library specializes primarily in its own country. It contains about forty-eight million copies of various publications (and not only), among which an incredible number of sources relating specifically to this state. Magazines, artifacts, children's literature, documents, films, maps, various manuscripts, photographs - in general, everything that is at least somehow connected with the history and culture of Canada.
Russian National Library
Everyone knows about the RSL - the Russian State Library in Moscow, but not everyone knows that Peter is also one of the lucky cities that can boast of having one of the largest largest libraries in the world. It is in the city on the Neva that the national library of our country is located, whose collection numbers about thirty-seven million units.
The St. Petersburg library got its current name relatively recently - in the early nineties of the last century. And until then, as soon as it was not called! But most Russian citizens know this repository of literature under the unofficial name of "Public." The construction of the Imperial Public Library (such is its first name) began at the end of the reign of Catherine the Great, but continued for nearly a century and a half. At the beginning of the work, the library had about two hundred sixty thousand books, only four (!) Of which were written in Russian. The development of the library, both in terms of increasing the number of books and relatively influential readers, occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century, as a result of which the storehouse acquired a new building.
Since the middle of the last century, the national library in St. Petersburg has been providing methodological assistance to libraries in various regions of our country. Many unique exhibits are stored in its walls, for example, the Voltaire library, the Ostromirov Gospel, the Laurentian Chronicle and others.
Japan Library
The National Parliamentary Library is located in Tokyo and ranks seventh among the largest libraries in the world. It was founded at the very end of the fifties of the twentieth century and has a fund of almost thirty-six million books. It is called the parliamentary library, because it was originally intended for members of parliament.
Its main feature is that it houses the International Children's Literature Library, which holds about four hundred thousand volumes of books for young readers. In total, the Japanese library has one central department and twenty-seven subsidiaries.
Danish library
The Royal Library of Denmark is located in its very heart - in Copenhagen. It is one of the largest libraries in the world as a whole and in Scandinavia in particular. This is a very old library - it dates back to the middle of the seventeenth century. However, this literary repository became available for mass use only a century later.
The current name of the library is twelve years old. She is famous, besides the fact that all the works published in the country from the seventeenth century are stored there, and the theft of more than three thousand books, which occurred in the seventies of the last century. Only at the beginning of this century was it possible to find out who was responsible for the theft. Ironically, this man - he used to work in this very library - died that same year.
French National Library
It is not only one of the largest libraries in the world, but also one of the oldest in Europe. For a rather long period of time, it was the personal library of kings. Charles the Great is considered to be its founder, however, after the death of the king, the meeting was lost, sold out. Restore the vault again began Louis the Ninth.
The national library located in Paris acquired a large volume of publications during the French Revolution. Then, by the way, it began to be called national. By the way, she was one of the first in the world to digitize her funds - not all, but the most popular.
Library of the Ancient World
If everything is more or less clear with modernity, then how was things in antiquity? After all, even then there was a need for such storage facilities. The largest library of the Ancient World can rightfully be called the library of Ashurbanipal, the Assyrian king who lived and ruled in the seventh century BC. He took the matter of collecting and preserving books seriously: he sent scribal messengers to various settlements who searched for ancient books and copied them. The Assyrian master called his collection “The House of Instructions and Advice”. Unfortunately, a good part of the meeting died in a fire, the remaining is stored in Britain.
Interesting Facts
- The library of Congress contains a personal collection of books of the Krasnoyarsk G.V. Yudin - about eighty thousand units.
- Japanese law states that all publishers there must send everything they publish to the parliamentary library.
- The German National Library collects and archives all kinds of publications from around the world in German.
- Ninety thousand audio and video files are stored in the library of Spain.
- In the Ukrainian library there are such rarities as the Kiev verb sheets, the Orsha Gospel or the “History of Animals” by Aristotle on parchment.
Here, only a few of the major libraries of the world in history are briefly described. Meanwhile, each of them - from those that are mentioned and that are not mentioned above - is fraught with so many interesting stories, so many unusual things ... They all deserve the right to be known to as many people as possible.