Excerpt from The Beginnings of LibrariesA considerable mass of memoranda on the early history of libraries has been gathered by the author of this essay dur ing the last twenty-five years, and out of this material various essays have been published from time to time on Antedilu vian Libraries, Medieval Libraries, Some Old Egyptian Librarians, etc. The fact that the unworked mass of modern infor mation through excavations is so great as to put OE for a long time still a syste matic treatise, has led to the plan of pub lishing these essays and addresses from time to time as completed and in uniform style. Although written for very differ ent audiences and in various methods, each is an attempt to gather information not generally accessible and to be, so far as it goes, either a contribution to knowledge or to the method of knowledge, a sort of preliminary report or investigation in thefield, pending full and systematic report. The nucleus of this essay on the Begin nings of Libraries was an address to the Library School of the New York Public Library at the beginning of the academic year 1912 - 13, and takes its color from this fact, but it has been freely enlarged. The writer owes special thanks to the American Museum of Natural History in New York.Ernest cushing richardson. Princeton University Library, October 12, 1913.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.