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The Sumerians were the first recorded people in the eastern world to experiment with a written language. Today we know this form of writing as Cuneiform.
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The Egyptians also invented a picture based form of writing, It was a mix between pictographs and ideograms. This form of writing is known as Hieroglyphics and is most commonly found in Egyptian tombs.
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The Phoenicians were the first to develop a form of writing that associated the characters with sounds made. They created a 20-30 letter alphabet. This system helped them to keep thorough financial records.
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Vowels were first seen in early Greek writing used to compliment the Phoenician sound alphabet. This brought the grand total to 24 characters.
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Around the time of the dark ages monks made manual copies of famous books in their monasteries. They created these "illuminated manuscripts" in a room called the scriptorium. They were then traded around the Mediterranean.
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Johann Gutenberg is credited with the invention of the printing press. This machine allowed books to be produce much quicker because you could simply arrange the letters once to print multiple copies. The upper class was not happy with this invention because it meant the lower class could now afford to own books and would become literate members of society.
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The printing press was first brought to the new world by Elizabeth and Joshua Glover. Mr. Glover did not make it to America but his wife continued on with the help of their printer Stephen Daye.
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When Boston local John Harvard died he left his fortune and his personal library to what later became Harvard. This collection of books he left behind became the first college library.
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Ben Franklin came up with the idea of pooling money and sharing books in a library. For a small cost you could share books with your neighbors so you didn't all have tot buy your own copies. This idea eventually built to what we now know as the public library.
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The first national library was originally part of the British museum. It is now it's own entity. Many other national libraries have followed throughout the years including the U.S.'s own Library of Congress. The aim of these libraries was to preserve the literary history of their respective countries.
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The Library of Congress was formed in 1800 when a portion of Thomas Jefferson's library was donated to the country. It was all lost in the war of 1812 but Jefferson then sold some more of his library to restart it in 1815.
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Horace Mann thought that all people deserved to have access to books and that started at the youngest age. Thus he decided to put libraries in schools that were available to the public and the students.
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Many things happened in the profession of librarianship in 1876. The American Library Association was formed and Melvil Dewey invented his decimal system to organize libraries.
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Andrew Carnegie funded the first public libraries in railroad towns. He then passed the continued care of the libraries onto the towns themselves. This set up the model for the modern public library. The Carnegie libraries can still be found today throughout the U.S. and have a very distinct structure.
