Among the chief modern public and university libraries are the Bibliothèque nationale and the Mazarine, Paris; the British Museum, London; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Vatican Library, Rome; the Ambrosian Library, Milan; the Laurentian Library, Florence; the Russian State Library, Moscow; the Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.; the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; the New York Public Library; the libraries of Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and other major American universities; and the Newbery and John Crerar libraries in Chicago.

   There are several sorts of libraries in the United States and elsewhere that exist apart from the public and university systems. Three major categories of these are private libraries, usually housing special collections, e.g., the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City of rare books in the humanities and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.; presidential libraries, which contain the papers of past presidents not held in the Library of Congress.

Bibliothèque nationale   (top)

   The Bibliothèque nationale, (bebleotek´ näsyônäl´) , the great national library of France, in Paris, is a governmental archive, and one of the foremost libraries in the world. It originated with the collections of writings made by early French kings, including Charlemagne. The collection of Charles V, placed in the tower of the old Louvre in the 14th century, and a library belonging to the house of Orléans at Blois were brought together at Fontainebleu in the 16th century under Francis I. The collection was later transferred to Paris by Charles IX, and was expanded greatly under the supervision of Jean-Baptiste Colbert in the 17th century.

   Since 1537 the library has been the legal depository for all books published in France. Its collection now includes more than 12 million books and manuscripts, 500,000 periodicals, 800,000 medals and coins, and 650,000 maps and prints. The library was housed in a building erected (1854-75) in the Rue de Richelieu under the direction of Henri Labrouste; it was remodeled (1932-39), and a 20th-century addition was built. A controversial new library complex in East Paris, commissioned by President François Mitterand and designed by Dominique Perrault, opened in 1998. The old building now houses such state collections as manuscripts, maps, and music. There are library annexes at Versailles, Provins, Sable, and Avignon.

British Museum Library   (top)

   The British Museum is the national repository in London for treasures in science and art. Located in the Bloomsbury section of the city, it has departments of antiquities, prints and drawings, coins and medals, and ethnography. The museum was established by act of Parliament in 1753 when the collection of Sir Hans Sloane, begun in the previous century and called the Cabinet of Curiosities, was purchased by the government and was joined with the Sir Robert Bruce Cotton collection and the Harleian Library collected by Robert Harley. In 1757 the royal library was given to the museum by George II.

   The museum was opened in 1759 under its present name in Montague House, but the acquisition of the library of George III in 1823 necessitated larger quarters. The first wing of the new building was completed in 1829, the quadrangle in 1852, and the great domed Reading Room in 1857. Later, other additions were built. Long a part of the museum, the British Library was established as a separate entity by act of Parliament in 1973 and moved to new London quarters in 1997.

   After the relocation of the library, the famous Reading Room underwent extensive renovations, including the opening of a surrounding glassed-in Great Court and the installation of a billowing transparent roof. The 1.5-acre (0.6 hectare) space now houses a gallery and a restaurant, as well as two small theaters and an education center beneath the courtyard.

Bodleian Library   (top)

   The Bodleian Library, (bod´leen, bodle´en), is at Oxford University. The original library was destroyed in the reign of Edward VI and replaced in 1602, chiefly through the efforts of Sir Thomas Bodley. Bodley gave it valuable collections of books and manuscripts and in his will left a fund for its maintenance. The library has one of the great collections of English books, including a major Shakespearean section. Its extensive manuscript collection is especially rich in biblical and Arabic material. A new building for the library was opened in 1946.

Vatican Library   (top)

   The Vatican Library in Rome was founded in the 4th century but stood dormant until given new life in the 15th cenury. by Pope Nicholas V. It is the oldest public library in Europe and one of the chief libraries of the world. It is constituted primarily as a manuscript library. The first major librarian, Bartolomeo Platina de' Sacchi, made a catalog of some 2,500 volumes.

   The library now holds more than 75,000 manuscripts and more than 1.1 million printed books, including some 8,500 incunabula. These figures do not include the vast Vatican archives, a separate collection of more than 150,000 items, and a collection of more than 300,000 coins and medals. Facilities of the library have been greatly improved in the 20th century, although the staff and funding remain small. With funds supplied principally by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, librarians from the United States did much work (1927-30) in cataloging and classifying the contents of the library. Microfilms of most of the library's great manuscript collection were deposited at St. Louis University in 1957.

Ambrosian Library   (top)

   The Ambrosian Library, (ambro´zhen), was founded circa 1605 in Milan by Cardinal Federico Borromeo. It became one of the earliest libraries to be opened to the public. The library's collection is rich in classical manuscripts, notably Homer and Vergil, in incunabula, and in Oriental texts. It also contains Leonardo da Vinci's profusely illustrated Codex Atlanticus.

Huntington Library   (top)

   Henry Edward Huntington (1850-1927), the American financier, was born in Oneonta, N.Y. He was prominent in railroad and other enterprises. Until the death of his uncle, Collis P. Huntington, the two were business associates. His estate at San Marino, near Pasadena, Calif., with botanical and other gardens, art collections, and library, together with a large endowment, was placed (1919-22) in the hands of trustees who were to maintain it for the public after his death.

    The Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery has the largest collection of incunabula in America; it excels also in rare legal documents showing the growth of English and American constitutional law, Americana (especially West Coast material), and manuscript collections of English literature. Its special treasures include a Gutenberg Bible, Gainsborough's Blue Boy, and Thomas Lawrence's Pinkie. The library gives a certain number of research fellowships and scholarships. It publishes many descriptive catalogs of its collections.

The Library of Congress   (top)

   The Library of Congress, established in 1800, is the national library of the United States located in Washington, D.C. Thomas Jefferson while Vice President was a prime mover in the creation of the library, and he supported it strongly during his presidency. In 1814, when much of the collection was destroyed by fire, Jefferson offered his own fine library to the Congress. This formed the basis of the collection until 1851, when fire destroyed some 35,000 volumes. The growth of the library progressed slowly thereafter until the passage of the Copyright Act of 1870, which required the deposit in the library of all copyright material. The acquisition in 1866 of the Smithsonian Institution's collection of 44,000 volumes and the purchase of the Peter Force collection of Americana (22,500 volumes; 1867) and the Joseph M. Toner American and Medical Library (38,000 volumes; 1882) made it one of the world's great libraries.

   Intended primarily to serve the legislative branch of the government, it is now open to the public as a reference library and sends out many books through an interlibrary loan system. It has African and Middle Eastern, Asian, European, and Hispanic divisions; a law library; and excellent collections of manuscripts, serials, incunabula, geography and maps, rare books, prints and photographs, motion pictures, music and recordings, science and technology, and computer files, representing materials in more than 450 languages.

   As of 1999, the Library of Congress contained some 115 million items, including about 17 million books, 4 million maps, and 50 million manuscripts. Its Online Catalog provides a database of some 12 million items from its collections. The library sells duplicate catalog entries on magnetic tape to smaller libraries for the books it adds to its collections. It provides other vital services to libraries through its many bibliographic functions (among them maintaining the National Union Catalog of the holdings of 700 large libraries in the United States and running the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped) and its Copyright Office. The library's Poetry and Literature Center (established 1936) is the home of the U.S. poet laureate. Mainly supported by congressional appropriations, the library also has income from gifts by foundations and individuals, administered by the Library of Congress Trust Fund Board.

The New York Public Library   (top)

   The New York Public Library is a free library supported by private endowments and gifts and by the city and state of New York. It is the one of largest libraries in the world. The library was created on May 23, 1895 by the consolidation of the older reference libraries established by bequests of John Jacob Astor (1763-1848) and James Lenox (1800-1880), with the Tilden Trust. In 1897 New York City agreed to build and equip a central building on the site of the Croton reservoir on Fifth Ave. between 40th and 42d St. The building, designed by John Mervin Carrère and Thomas Hastings, was completed in 1911. The branch system absorbed several independently endowed circulating libraries, and 39 branches were built with money donated by Andrew Carnegie in 1901.

   In addition to the main building, collections are also housed at a second midtown branch, an annex for newspapers and patents, and 82 branch libraries. A circulating and reference branch devoted entirely to the performing arts is located at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts , and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is one of the finest collections of its kind in the world.

   The enormous and fully computerized Science, Industry, and Business Library, located at Madison Avenue and 34th Street in midtown, opened in 1996. The largest project undertaken by the library since 1911, it features a variety of traditional and ultramodern facilities and resources. In 1999 the library opened its Center for Scholars and Writers in a suite at the main building. Directed by historian Peter Gay, the Center draws on library collections to foster creative writing and thinking, advance scholarship, and sponsor public events, and appoints 15 participating fellows annually.

   The research library contains more than 10,000,000 volumes. The library has especially fine collections on Americana, art, economics, folklore, music, black history and literature, New York City, Jewish history, and Semitic languages. It has an excellent newspaper collection and is an important collector and holder of prints, manuscripts, first editions, and rare books, including the Berg collection of English and American literature.

The Pierpont Morgan Library   (top)

   The Pierpont Morgan Library was originally the private library of J. Pierpont Morgan. In 1924 it was made a public institution by his son J. P. Morgan as a memorial to his father. The library is privately supported; it is located at Madison Ave. and 36th St., New York City. It is especially rich in illuminated manuscripts and in authors' manuscripts including works by Dickens, Scott, and Balzac. It has hundreds of Bibles in all languages, one of the largest collections of Aldus Manutius's Aldine Press editions, and the only perfect copy of Malory's Morte d'Arthur printed by Caxton.

   In 1973 its holdings were estimated as 65,000 volumes. The publications of the library include monographs, catalogs of collections and exhibits, reprints, and fascimiles. It is open to scholars for research and to the general public for exhibitions and lectures.

The Folger Shakespeare Library   (top)

   Henry Clay Folger, (fol´jer, 1857-1930) was an American industrialist and collector of Shakespeareana. His connection with Standard Oil companies, beginning in 1879, continued until his retirement 49 years later as chairman of the board of the New York company. He was an enthusiastic student of Shakespeare during his college days and became a discerning collector. His wife, Emily Jordan Folger (d. 1936), was his associate in this work. Their collection, quietly acquired, became one of the largest and most valuable of its sort in the world.

   The Folger Shakespeare Library, east of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 1932. Its major collections contain more than 250,000 volumes, primarily 16th and 17th century works of literature, drama, and history of the English Renaissance. It is administered by Amherst College trustees.