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Great Library of Alexandria, a public library open to those with the proper scholarly and literary qualifications, founded about 300B.C..
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In the early 500s in Egypt, a man named Pachomius established a monastery and insisted on literacy among his monks. This was to have a long-lasting effect even after the Roman Empire split in two about 100 years later. Throughout the rest of the eastern empire, monastic communities emerged with small and mostly theological libraries.
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Cosimo de Medici of the famous Florentine family established his own collection, which formed the basis of the Laurentian Library. Also in Italy, the Vatican Library opened in the 1400s.
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Throughout the 1600s and 1700s, libraries surged in popularity. They grew as universities developed and as national, state-supported collections began to appear. Many of these became national libraries.
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Benjamin Franklin and his Junto Sociaty opened the first library of the Philadelphia Library Company.
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The British invaded Washington D.C. and burned down the Library of Congress destroyingtheir collection of 5,000 books.
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This library opened in Fredericksburg in 1822 and it cost five dollars to check out books for a year.
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Melvin Dewey founds the School Library Service, the first training school for librarians.
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Julius Caeser dreamed of creating a library and when he passed away, Asinius Pollio made it a reality. Middle of the second century.
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Creation of MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging, which allowed bibliographic data to be entered and dessminated electronically on computer tapes.
