EVOLUATION OF Libraries and Information

sources
Objectives: Paper IV LIS:321 Marks: 100
To give an overview of the evolution of libraries and various formats of
information and knowledge resources starting from ancient to present times To
develop basic understanding regarding these formats
Description:

Ancient records of knowledge.

Evolution of alphabets.
Clay tablets. Parchment. Papyrus roles. Codex. Paper
Books. Serials-- Journals, Magazines, newspapers.
Audio-visual. Multimedia. Microforms.
Digital forms-- online, offline.
History of libraries.
Ancient, Traditional, modren libraries
Lecture 1:

Origin of writing system

Some Definitions:

History:
1) the branch of knowledge dealing with past events.

2 ) a continuous, systematic narrative of past events as

relating to a particular people, country, period, person, etc.,
usually written as a chronological account; chronicle: a
history of France; a medical history of the patient.
3 ) the aggregate of past events.

4 ) the record of past events and times, especially in

connection with the human race.
5 ) a past notable for its important, unusual, or interesting
events:
6 ) a study of past events particularly in human affairs
7 ) the whole series of past events connected
with some one

8 ) Inquiry of knowledge acquired by investigation ; it is

the discovery, collection, organization, and
presentation of information about past events.
Origin: Beginning of something

System: A set of things working together as a part of a

mechanism.
An organized set of ideas or theories or a
particular way of doing

Writing: A system in which ideas/ concepts / thoughts are

represented in symbols

• A writing system is a type of symbolic system

used to represents elements or statements
expressible in language
A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent
General properties of writing system:
Writing systems are distinguished from other possible
symbolic communication systems in that the reader
must usually understand something of the associated
spoken language to comprehend the text. In contrast,
other possible symbolic systems such as information
signs, painting, maps and mathematics often do not
require prior knowledge of a spoken language.

Every human community possesses language, which

many regard as an innate (a quality or feeling in the
birth) and defining condition of mankind. However,
the development of writing systems, and the process
by which they have supplanted (to take the place of )
traditional oral systems of communication has been
sporadic (scattered, irregular), uneven and slow.
Once established, writing systems generally
change more slowly than their spoken
counterparts. Thus, they often preserve
features and expressions which are no longer
current in the spoken language. The great
benefit of writing systems is their ability to
maintain a persistent record of information
expressed in a language, which can be
retrieved independently of the initial act of
formulation
All writing systems require:
•at least one set of defined base elements or symbols, individually
termed characters or graphemes (the smallest unit which has the
meaning in the writing system) and collectively called a script (a set
of character in which language is written);

•at least one set of rules and conventions (orthography)

understood and shared by a community, which arbitrarily
(not based on reasons ) assigns meaning to the base
elements their ordering and relations to one another;

•at least one language (generally spoken) whose

constructions are represented and able to be recalled by the
interpretation of these elements and rules.
 Mesopotamia : "land between two rivers

map showing the Tigris–Euphrates river system, which defines

Mesopotamia
History of writing systems

The history of writing follows the art of expressing words by

letters or other marks. The invention of the first writing
systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the
Bronze Age in the late Neolithic (relating to, or denoting the
later part of the Stone Age, when ground or polished stone
weapons and implements prevailed ) of the late 4th
millennium BC.

The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script (used to record a

variety of information such as temple activities, business
and trade stories myths and personal letters) and the
Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest
writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-
literate symbol systems from 3400–3200 BC with earliest
coherent texts from about 2600 BC.
Cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of
written expression. Emerging in Sumer around the 30th
century BC, with predecessors reaching into the late 4th
millennium cuneiform writing began as a system of p
ictographs.

Cuneiform writing was gradually replaced by alphabetic

writing in the Iron Age Neo-Assyrian Empire and was
practically extinct by the beginning of the Common Era.

The cuneiform writing system was in use for more than 35

centuries, as the world's first system through several stages
of evolution, from the 34th century BC down to the 1st
century AD.
It was completely replaced by alphabetic writing in the
course of the Roman era and has left behind no descendant
systems in continued use.

The system consists of a combination of logophonetic,

consonantal alphabetic and syllabic signs. cuneiform script
underwent considerable changes over a period of more than
two millennia. The image below shows the development of
the sign SAG "head"
Cuneiform writing system was used to write in
different languages in mesopotamia they used to
write Sumerian Akadian and also Elamite , Hittite
and Urartian

Writing systems were preceded by proto-writing,

systems of ideographic and/or early mnemonic
symbols. The best known examples are:
•Jiahu Script, symbols on tortoise shells in Jiahu,
ca. 6600 BC Vinča script (Tărtăria tablets), ca.
5300 BC Early Indus script, ca. 3500 BC
The Chinese script likely developed independently of the Middle
Eastern scripts, around 1200 BC.

The pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems (including among

others Olmec and Maya scripts) are also generally believed to have
had independent origins.

It is thought that the first consonantal alphabetic writing appeared

around 2000 BC, as a representation of language developed for
Semitic slaves in Egypt by Egyptians. Most other alphabets in the
world today either descended from this one innovation, many via the
Phoenician alphabet, or were directly inspired by its design.

The first true alphabet is the Greek script which consistently

represents vowels since 800 BC. The Latin alphabet, a direct
descendant, is by far the most common writing system in use.]
 Types of Writing System
The various kinds of writing which have been in use in
different ages and in different parts of the world may be
classified in two great divisions,
1)according as the object of their inventors was to present
the ideas to which they wished to give visible expression
directly and immediately to the mind, or
2)indirectly, through the medium of spoken language.[1].[4]

The various methods — the ideographic and the

phonographic or phonetic — has its attendant advantages
and disadvantages; but the advantages of the latter
method greatly preponderate (having superior power and
influence)
Several approaches have been taken to classify writing systems,
the most common and basic one is a broad division into three
categories:
Logographic (Pictography),
syllabic (Ideography), and
alphabetic (Phonetic) ;
however, all three may be found in any given writing system in
varying proportions, often making it difficult to categorise a system
uniquely.
Developmental stages
A conventional "proto-writing to true writing" system follows a
general series of developmental stages:

Picture writing system: (Pictography) (ca 5000 BC) glyphs (Symbols)

represent directly objects and ideas or objective and ideational
situations. It start with the one picture then developed into series of
pictures In connection with this the following sub-stages may be
distinguished:
The mnemonic: glyphs primarily a reminder; and
The pictographic (pictography): glyphs represent
directly an object or an objective situation such as
(A)chronological, (B) notices
(C) communications, (D) titles, and names,
(E) religious, (F) customs,
(G) historical, and (H) biographical;
In pictography the object drawn signify exactly the
object meant.
To read this kind of writing, it does not necessary to
speak the same language of the person who wrote
the pictograms. You just need to recognize the
symbols.
It is easy to misunderstood the message or story
Pictography
The ideographic (ideography): glyphs represent directly an
idea or an ideational situation.
In this system the ideas of human mind begin to project on
external surface, symbols were used for expression of ideas
like social practices, business activities etc

Transitional system: glyphs refer not only to the object or idea

which it represents but to its name as well.
Phonetic system: (is a branch of linguistics that
comprises the study of the sounds of human speech)
Glyphs (elements) refer to sounds or spoken symbols
irrespective of their meanings.
In pictography symbols are used but each symbol has
neither picture value nor idea value it has only sound
value
This resolves itself into the following sub-stages:
The verbal: glyphs represents a whole word;
The syllabic: glyphs represent a syllable;
The alphabetic: glyphs represent an elementary
sound
True writing, or phonetic writing, records were developed
independently in four different civilizations in the world.
Writing systems developed from neolithic writing in the
Early Bronze Age (4th millennium BC). The invention of the
phonetic system is roughly contemporary with the
beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic of the late
4th millennium BC. The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script
and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the
earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their
ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400–3200 BC
with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC. The
Chinese and Mesopotamian Phonetic systems have
especially been influential in the development of the
systems of writing in use in the world today
Development of Alphabets

Etruscan
History of writing material
Clay tablet
In ancient times, small tablets made out of clay were used
as a writing medium.
From the 4th millennium BC in the Sumerian, Babylonian,
Assyrian and Hittite civilisations of the Mesopotamia region,
cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet
with a stylus often made of reed . Once written upon, many
tablets were dried in the sun or air, remaining fragile. Later,
these unfired clay tablets could be soaked in water and
recycled into new clean tablets. Other tablets, once written,
were grilled in a kennal or fired in kilns (or inadvertently,
when buildings were burnt down by accident or during
conflict) making them hard and durable.
Collections of these clay documents made up
the very first archives. They were at the root of
first libraries. Tens of thousands of written
tablets, including many fragments, have been
found in the Middle East.

The Tărtăria tablets, thought to be from the

Danubian civilization, may be older still, having
been carbon dated to before 4000 BC, and
possibly dating from as long ago as 5500 BC, but
their interpretation remains controversial
Papyrus is a thick paper-like material produced
from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a
wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile
Delta of Egypt.
Papyrus usually grow 2–3 meters (5–9 ft) tall. Papyrus
is first known to have been used in ancient Egypt (at
least as far back as the First dynasty), but it was also
used throughout the Mediterranean region. Ancient
Egypt used this plant for boats, mattresses, mats, rope,
sandals, and baskets
Papyrus was first manufactured in Egypt as far back as
the third millennium BC
Parchment is a thin material made from
calfskin, sheepskin or goatskin, often split. Its
most common use was as a material for writing
on, for documents, notes, or the pages of a book
, codex or manuscript. It is distinct from leather
in that parchment is limed but not tanned,
therefore it is very reactive with changes in
relative humidity and is not waterproof. The
finer qualities of parchment are called vellum.
parchment was invented under the patronage of
Eumenes of Pergamum , as a substitute for
papyrus, which was temporarily not being
exported from Alexandria, its only source.
Parchment (pergamenum in Latin), however,
derives its name from Pergamon, the city where it
was perfected (via the French "parchemin"). In
the 2nd century B.C. a great library was set up in
Pergamon that rivalled the famous Library of
Alexandria. As prices rose for papyrus and the
reed used for making it was over-harvested
towards local extinction in the two nomes of the
Nile delta that produced it, Pergamon adapted by
increasing use of parchment.
Writing on prepared animal skins had a long history,
however. Some Egyptian Fourth Dynasty texts were
written on parchment. Though the Assyrians and the
Babylonians impressed their cuneiform on clay tablets,
they also wrote on parchment from the 6th century BC
onward. Rabbinic culture equated a "book" with a
parchment scroll. Early Islamic texts are also found on
parchment
One sort of parchment is vellum , a word that is used
loosely to mean parchment, and especially to mean fine
parchment, but more strictly refers to parchment made
from calfskin (although goatskin can be as fine in quality).
The words "vellum" and "veal " come from Latin vitulus,
"calf", or its diminutive vitellus. In the Middle Ages
calfskin and split sheepskin were the most common
materials for making parchment in England and France
, while goatskin was more common in Italy Other skins
such as those from large animals such as horse and
smaller animals such as squirrel and rabbit were also
used. Whether uterine vellum (vellum made from
aborted calf fetuses) was ever really used during the
medieval period is still a matter of great controversy.
There was a short period during the introduction of
printing where parchment and paper were used
interchangeably: although most copies of the Gutenberg
Bible are on paper, some were printed on parchment. In
1490, Johanne Trithemius preferred the older methods,
because "handwriting placed on parchment will be able
to endure a thousand years. But how long will printing
last, which is dependent on paper? For if ...it lasts for
two hundred years that is a long time."
In the later Middle Ages , parchment was largely replaced
by paper . New techniques in paper milling allowed it to
be much cheaper and more abundant than parchment.
With the advent of printing in the later fifteenth century,
the demands of printers far exceeded the supply of animal
skins for parchment.
parchment never stopped being used (primarily for
governmental documents and diplomas) it had ceased to
be a primary choice for artist’s supports by the end of 15th
century Renaissance . This was partly due to its expense
and partly due to its unusual working properties.
Parchment consists mostly of collagen. When the water
in paint media touches parchment’s surface, the collagen
melts slightly, forming a raised bed for the paint, a quality
highly prized by some artists.
Parchment is also extremely affected by its environment
and changes in humidity, which can cause buckling.
Some contemporary artists also prize this quality, noting
that the parchment seems alive and like an active
participant in making artwork. To support the needs of
the revival of use by artists, a revival in the art of making
individual skins is also underway. Handmade skins are
usually better prepared for artists and have fewer oily
spots which can cause long-term cracking of paint than
mass-produced parchment. Mass-produced parchment
is usually made for lamp shades, furniture, or other
interior design purposes.
Vellum (from the Old French Vélin, for "calfskin")[1]
is mammal skin prepared for writing or printing on, to
produce single pages, scrolls, codices or books. It is
generally smooth and durable, although there are great
variations depending on preparation, the quality of the
skin and the type of animal used. The manufacture
involves the cleaning, bleaching, stretching on a frame,
and scraping with a hemispherical knife of the skin. To
create tension, scraping is alternated by wetting and
drying. A final finish may be achieved by abrading the
surface with pumice, and treating with a preparation of
lime or chalk to make it accept writing or printing ink.[2]
Modern "paper vellum" is used for a variety of purposes,
especially for plans, technical drawings and blueprints
Calfskin
History of paper
Tradition says that paper was
invented in China by Ts'ai Lun an
official of the Emperor Wu Di in
105 AD.
The history of paper began in
Ancient Egypt aprox. 3,700BC-
3,200BC (aprox. 5,710 to 5,210 years
before present) with the use of
Papyrus as a medium for written
records, a considerable advance over
the technique employed by the
Sumerians of writing on clay tablets.
The transition from clay tablets to
Paper was as revolutionary as the
step from manuscripts to printing.
The word "paper" is derived from "Papyrus", the ancient Greek
word for the Egyptian Papyrus plant, while the word "Book" is
derived from another Ancient Greek word for Papyrus
"Biblos".

During the Han Dynasty, they created a sheet of paper using

mulberry and other beast fibres along with fishnets, old rags
(textile waste) , and hemp waste and some times also Plant
fibers and they were soaked and beaten into a sludge. The
sludge was strained through a cloth sieve attached to a frame
that also served as a drying platform for the resulting paper
During the Chinese Song Dynasty (960–1279 AD) not only did
the government produce the world's first known paper-
printed money, or banknote but paper money bestowed as
gifts to deserving government officials were wrapped in
special paper envelopes
Papermaking in Islamic countries (Mid-East)
After the defeat of the Chinese in the Battle of Talas in 751
(present day Kyrgyzstan), the invention spread to the Middle
East.

The rudimentary (being an earliest stage of development)

and laborious process of paper making was refined and
machinery was designed for bulk manufacturing of paper by
Muslims.

The world's first paper mill began production in Baghdad,

where the Arab Muslims invented a method to make a
thicker sheet of paper.

The world's first paper mills were built in Baghdad from 794
CE, which helped transform papermaking from an art into a
major industry.
The manufacture had spread to Damascus by the time of the
First Crusade in 1096; but the wars interrupted production,
and it split into two centres. First Cairo continued with the
thicker paper. And Iran became the centrer of the thinner
papers.
Although the export of paper from the Muslim Empire to
Byzantium (Modren Turkey and around) and other parts of
the Christian Empire was allowed in small quantities by the
11th century,
paper was disfavored by the Christian Church as a
manifestation of Muslim efforts to dominate trade and
culture. Efforts were made for hundreds of years to boycott
its use.
Finally, in 1221 AD, a decree from Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick II declared all official documents written on paper to
be invalid
Muslim engineers, at the request of influential Italian
entrepreneurs, built Europe's first paper mill in Italy by early
15th century.
The invention of Gutenberg's printing press in the mid 15th
Century forced a change in Church's attitudes toward paper,
and bulk supplies continued to be sold by the Ottoman Turks
and Egyptians to Europe till the 17th Century, until Europe
became self sufficient in paper production.

It has been argued that the age of enlightenment may have

been delayed considerably if the availability of paper had not
been widely spread
European papermaking
The first paper mill in Europe was in Spain, at Xàtiva
in the present-day region of Valencia, in 1120. More
mills appeared in Italy in about the 13th century, as
an import from Islamic Spain.

They used hemp and linen rags as a source of fibre

The first commercially successful paper mill in
England was opened by John Spilman in 1588 and
was initially reliant on German papermaking
expertise
19th century advances in papermaking
Paper remained expensive, at least in book-sized
quantities, through the centuries, until the advent
of steam-driven paper making machines in the
19th century, which could make paper with fibres
from wood pulp. .
 Digital Writing System
Binary The binary numeral system, or base-2
number system, represents numeric values using two
symbols, 0 and 1

Decimal The decimal numeral system (also called

base ten) has ten as its base.
It is the numerical base most widely used by modern
civilizations.
Decimal notation often refers to a base-10
positional notation such as the
Hindu-Arabic numeral system;
with digits taking values 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9.
 Octal The octal numeral system, or oct for short, is
the base-8 number system, and uses the digits 0 to 7
An octal number with base 8 makes use of the EIGHT
digits
0,1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7.

Hexadecimal number systems

In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal
(also base 16, or hex) is a positional numeral system
with a radix, or base, of 16.
It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the
symbols 0–9 to represent values zero to nine, and A,
B, C, D, E, F
(or alternatively a–f) to represent values ten to fifteen.
Digital Storage
Nowadays we are used to having hundreds of
gigabytes of storage capacity in our computers. Even
tiny MP3 players and other handheld devices usually
have several gigabytes of storage. This was pure
science fiction only a few decades ago. For example,
the first hard disk drive to have gigabyte capacity was
as big as a refrigerator, and that was in 1980. Not so
long ago!
Pingdom stores a lot of monitoring data every single
day, and considering how much we take today’s
storage capacity for granted, it’s interesting to look
back and get things in perspective. Here is a look back
at some interesting storage devices from the early
computer era
The Selectron tube
The Selectron tube had a capacity of 256
to 4096 bits (32 to 512 bytes). The 4096-
bit Selectron was 10 inches long and 3
inches wide. Originally developed in
1946, the memory storage device proved
expensive and suffered from production
problems, so it never became a success.

The Selectron tube was an early form of computer memory

developed by RCA (Radio Corporation of America). the
Selectron was also a random access storage device.
Punch cards
Early computers often used
punch cards for input both of
programs and data. Punch
cards were in common use
until the mid-1970s. It should
be noted that the use of
punch cards predates
computers..
Punched tape
Same as with punch cards, punched tape
was originally pioneered by the textile
industry for use with mechanized looms. For
computers, punch tape could be used for
data input but also as a medium to output
data. Each row on the tape represented one
character
Punched tape consists of a long strip of
paper in which holes are punched to store
data. The earliest forms of punched tape
come from weaving looms and embroidery,
where cards with simple instructions about
a machine's intended movements were first
fed individually as instructions, then
controlled by instruction cards, and later
were fed as a string of connected cards.
 Magnetic tape
In the 1950s magnetic tapes was
first used by IBM to store data.
Since one roll of magnetic tape
could store as much data as 10
000 punch cards it became an
instant success and became the
most popular way of storing
computer data until the mid
1980s
The tapes were metal and 1200 feet long (365 meters)
and therefore very heavy.
Magnetic drum
Invented all the way back in 1932
(in Austria), it was widely used in
the 1950s and 60s as the main
working memory of computers. In
the mid-1950s, magnetic drum
memory had a capacity of around
10 kB.
The hard disk drive
The first hard disk drive was
the IBM Model 350 Disk File
that came in 1956. It had 50-
24-inch discs with a total
storage capacity of 5 million
characters
The first hard drive to
have more than 1 GB in
capacity It was the size
of a refrigerator,
weighed 550 pounds
(250 kg),
The floppy disc
The diskette, or floppy disk (named
so because they were flexible), was
invented by IBM and in common use
from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s.
The first floppy disks were 8 inches,
and later in came 5.25 and 3.5-inch
formats. The first floppy disk,
introduced in 1971, had a capacity of
79.7 kB, and was read-only. A read-
write version came a year later.
The Laserdisc
We mention it here mainly
because it was the precursor to the
CD-ROM and other optical
storage solutions. It was mainly
used for movies. The first
commercially available laserdisc
system was available on the
market late in 1978 and were 11.81
inches (30 cm) in diameter. The
discs could have up to 60 minutes
of audio/video on each side. The
first laserdiscs had entirely analog
content. The basic technology
behind laserdiscs was invented all
the way back in 1958
A memory card or flash card is an electronic flash
memory data storage device used for storing digital
information. They are commonly used in many
electronic devices, including digital cameras, mobile
phones, laptop computers, MP3 players, and video
game consoles. They are small, re-recordable, and
able to retain data without power.
History of libraries:
•development of culture and civilization has caused the development of libraries
•Libraries were established to save the cultural heritages
•Man is social animal and libraries are the social institutions
•Development of libraries are depend upon the development of civilization
•Mesopotamia is the first to establish the society and libraries
•Sumerian used to store the clay tablets in their religious schools.
•Most part of the Sumerian literature was on religion
•In Mesopotamia region we found that there were govt. religious and historical
libraries.
•After that the city of Babylon was established currently situated at South
Baghdad in Iraq
• They follow the Sumerian culture and used to produce literature on religion
science commerce on clay tablets .
•At that time different buildings has been established by Iraqi King Sargon for
library to store the literature on Astronomy, history , religious
Assyrian Libraries: Assyrian ruled by defeating bablyon in1100 BC they also
adopted Sumerian and mesopotian culture and literature and culture for
development of their civilization.
•They also used to store the information like Agriculture; Trade; Administration etc;
•In this era different public and private libraries were established among them the
biggest public libraries was :
•Ashurbanipal Library (668-627 C)
•He was ruler of Ancient Assyria ; estt: a great library at Ninevah (capital of Assyria)
•He collected thousands of clay tablets and other material of all kind from diff: areas
•Currently its most of the collection is moved to England in British Museum
•King Ashurbanipal was literate and a passionate collector of texts and tables
•He sent scribers into every region to collect ancient texts.
•He hired scholars and scribes to copy text mainly from Babylonian source
•He collected different fragments (a small broken parts) from the different royal lib:
including royal inscriptions (words written on monuments or books); Chronicles (a
factual written accounts of historical events in order of their occurrence) Mythological
(traditional stories ) religious text; contract; royal grants; degrees ;royal letters and
various administrative doc: from all over the world
•Most of the text were written in Akkadian in Cuneiform scripts
•Ninevah was destroyed in 612 BC by a Collation of Babylonians ; Sythian and Medes
on ancient Persian race
•This palace was burnt out during the conflict along with library
•Arrangement of library material was sought out as subject wise and separate rooms
and catalogue on door side; and every person has a common access to library
collection.