oday there are libraries in almost every towns in the world. Even in areas where there are no libraries, there are often mobile libraries which take boos from one village to the other. But in the days when books were copied by hand rather han printed, libraries were very rare. The reason is simple: books took a very long time to produce, and there were far fewer coppies of any given work around. The greatest library of all, that in Alexandia, had 54,000 books.

In the ancient world, this number was considered huge. It was the first time that anyone had collected so many books from all around the world under one roof. There are many theories about why these books were lost. One is that the library accidentally burned down. Another is that one of the rulers of the city ordered the books to be burned. They were taken to various places and it took six monthsto burn them. Whatever happened, the collection there was priceless. Many of the library’s treasures were lost forever-sone books were never recovered. We cannot even know exactly what the library containd.