What do we know about the organizational structure of the Library of Alexandria?
score:8
In the Wikipedia article you have copied there is a reference to the Pinakes.
Searching I have found and article on this website Library Philosophy and Practice (LPP) that explains the organization of the books, manuscripts,... of this vast library. I copy some fragments:
About Zenodotus, the first librarian
Zenodotus, the Great Library's first librarian, introduced a rudimentary organization system whereby texts were assigned to different rooms based on their subject matter. Zenodotus first inventoried the Library’s holdings, which he then organized into three major categories. [...] Within each of these divisions, Zenodotus organized the works alphabetically by the first letter of the name of their author [...] Library staff under Zenodotus attached a small dangling tag to the end of each scroll, which contained information on each work’s author, title, and subject so that materials could be easily returned to the area in which they had been classified
About Callimachus of Cyrene.
Callimachus produced the pinakes [...] Callimachus listed works alphabetically by author and genre. He did what modern librarians would call “adding metadata” -- writing a short biographical note on each author, which prefaced that author’s entry within his catalogue. [...] In addition, Callimachus noted the first words of the work, and the total number of lines in the document. Later librarians were to make marginal notations in the pinakes, which provided even more information on the nature of the catalogued document [...] By consulting the pinakes, a library patron could find out if the library contained a work by a particular author, how it was categorized, and where it might be found.
But...
While the pinakes is very similar to what modern librarians would refer to as a library catalogue, it did not cover the entirety of the holdings of the Great Library. It dealt only with the largest and most often used portion of the collection. However, Zenodotus’ organizational principle did cover the entire Library.
According to biblicalarchaeology.org gives more details about the "meta-data" done by Callimachus.
The Pinakes identified each volume by its title, then recorded the name and birthplace of the author, the name of the author’s father and teachers, the place and nature of the author’s education, any nickname or pseudonym applied to the author, a short biography (including a list of the author’s works and a comment on their authenticity), the first line of the work specified, a brief digest of the volume, the source from which the book was acquired (such as the city where it was bought or the ship or traveler from which it was confiscated), the name of the former owner, the name of the scholar who edited or corrected the text, whether the book contained a single work or numerous distinct works, and the total number of lines in each work.
Upvote:6
Strabo, who was in Egypt from 24 to 19 BC and gave us detailed accounts of the Museum, claims the inspiration for the Library's organization - at least initially - was Aristotle (emphasis mine):
From Scepsis came the Socratic philosophers Erastus and Coriscus and Neleus the son of Coriscus, this last a man who not only was a pupil of Aristotle and Theophrastus, but also inherited the library of Theophrastus, which included that of Aristotle. At any rate, Aristotle bequeathed his own library to Theophrastus, to whom he also left his school; and he is the first man, so far as I know, to have collected books and to have taught the kings in Egypt how to arrange a library.
Source: Strab. 13.1.54.
The story seems likely; Aristotle was the father of taxonomy and his personal library was one of the earliest acquisitions of the Library. The early librarians probably modeled their own approaches upon Aristotle's. However, we don't have any details on how Aristotle organized his library, and to what degree the early librarians adopted his methods.
What we do know, is that Zenodotus of Ephesus, the first librarian according to the Suda, arranged books in different rooms according to their subject matter. Then, within each room, he arranged the books alphabetically (by their author's name). His system may seem rudimentary by today's standards, but for the time it was revolutionary. In fact, it's the earliest known instance of alphabetic organization.
Callimachus of Cyrene furthered Zenodotus system in his magnum opus, the Tables of people who distinguished themselves in all branches of learning. Pinakes, as the work is better known, is a bio-bibliographical survey of the more significant Greek writings, divided in 120 books. According to Wikipedia:
Callimachus' system divided works into six genres and five sections of prose. These were rhetoric, law, epic, tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, history, medicine, mathematics, natural science and miscellanies. Each category was alphabetized by author.
Unfortunately only a few fragments of the Pinakes survive, but from those fragments we know they included biographical data, including the author's other works, and general notes for each work (e.g. its extend). Callimachus' Pinakes were the key to the vast collection of Library, and were constantly updated by subsequent librarians and grammarians, as the collection grew.
Sources:
- The Pínakes of Callimachus, Francis J. Witty
- The Other Pinakes and Reference Works of Callimachus, Francis J. Witty
1 Πίνακες των εν πάση παιδεία διαλαμψάντων.
More post
- 📝 How were medieval guilds formed?
- 📝 What was Justice Louis Brandeis's opinion on eugenics?
- 📝 What advantages have motorized infantry enjoyed over standard infantry besides speed?
- 📝 What weapon systems have come and gone very quickly?
- 📝 Why was it necessary to maintain a balance of power between the Slave and Free states?
- 📝 Why does US currency have a 25 cent piece and a 20 dollar bill instead of a 20 cent piece or 25 dollar bill?
- 📝 What present-day monarchs descend from Rodrigo de Borgia, a.k.a., Pope Alexander VI?
- 📝 When in 1775 was Anza in Culiacán?
- 📝 What flags are on display in “Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States”?
- 📝 Is there proof that John Proctor owned a tavern?
- 📝 What was the reason of extreme anti-Communism in the first half of 20th century?
- 📝 What did typical mid-18th century housing look like in English villages?
- 📝 When Israel won the Six Day War, did they consider expelling all Arabs from the annexed territories?
- 📝 Patriotism and how it contributed to the recruitment process in WW1
- 📝 Has bad government interventions in the economy ever resulted in unexpectedly good outcomes for the industry?
- 📝 Line houses and laws?
- 📝 At Pearl Harbor was a Japanese Third Wave of attack in the original plan or was Nagumo expected to improvise?
- 📝 Why Sulla general slaughtered inhabitants of Praeneste?
- 📝 Why was there a perceived high rate of AIDS infection among Haitians?
- 📝 Where can I find a scan of the translated "De re militari" in Bulgarian?
- 📝 Is that armistice wagon photograph authentic?
- 📝 Place and/ or plane identification
- 📝 Was Vox In Rama a factor of the quick spread of the Black Plague?
- 📝 More Scientific Discoveries Outside Academia Past 50 Years?
- 📝 Why is there so much prehistoric art found in Spain and France?
- 📝 Were Jefferson and Madison Jacksonians?
- 📝 Why did North America economically prosper, and maintain stable government and South/Central America didn't?
- 📝 Did Imperial Japan persecute Slavic people, as European fascists did?
- 📝 Was the site of Rome and Constantinople chosen for featuring "seven hills"?
- 📝 When did English become a major subject in Japanese schools?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What do we know about the organizational structure of the Library of Alexandria?
- 📝 What historical evidence is there for the existence of Jesus Christ? What do we know about him?
- 📝 What did the average German citizen know about the war?
- 📝 What did the Soviets know about the Hunger Plan during WWII?
- 📝 What do I need to know about Syria's history to understand the 2011-2012 uprising?
- 📝 What did the Jews during the First Jewish-Roman War know about other anti-Roman revolts?
- 📝 What do we know about the location of Islamic schools in pre-colonial Africa?
- 📝 How does finding a Franklin ship change what we know about the expedition?
- 📝 At what point did mapmaking begin to accurately reflect what we now know about the earth?
- 📝 What do we know about the squadron that evacuated Moore's force after Corunna?
- 📝 What did the English people during the Peasants' Revolt know about the Ciompi Revolt?
- 📝 What did Kennedy know about Soviet missiles during the Cuban missile crisis?
- 📝 What do we currently know about the ethnic origins of Jews?
- 📝 What do we know about the character of William Adelin, son of Henry I?
- 📝 What do we know about the !Kung "major gatherings" (up to 200 peoples)?
- 📝 What knowledge may have been lost at the Library of Alexandria?
- 📝 Aside from the Pyramids, what is the tallest man-made structure still standing in Europe & the Near East from ancient times?
- 📝 What did Germany do in World War II about the different rail gauge in the Soviet Union?
- 📝 What did people in 13th century England know about Greek mythology?
- 📝 What is the oldest authentic example of people complaining about modern times and the young?
- 📝 What do the modern Japanese people think about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
- 📝 What disruptions were brought about by Islam that the Arabians saw so many victories?
- 📝 Did Churchill and Roosevelt know about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, or the following secret pacts between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union?
- 📝 Did the Romans know about China?
- 📝 What evidence is there of the vision aids people used before the invention of eyeglasses in about 1286?
- 📝 What is the context for Napoleon's quote "[the Austrians] did not know the value of five minutes"?
- 📝 Did the aborigines of Australia and the Maoris in New Zealand know about each other's existence, before the Europeans came?
- 📝 What did Native Americans know, or speculate, about the Old world?
- 📝 What did Tacitus write about Nero and the Great Fire of Rome 64AD?
- 📝 What was the structure of religious beliefs among the Arabic peoples before conversion to Islam?