Love Your Local Southern Utah Library

The month of February is Library Lovers Month and for those of us who love to read, it’s an excuse to get some extra reading in. 

Let’s take an abbreviated look at the history of ancient libraries that gets us to the world’s most famous ancient library before looking at some fun library facts. I'll also show you where you can visit your local Southern Utah library.

According to Britannica.com, “In the earliest times, there was no distinction between a record room and a library.” One of the earliest libraries was “A temple in the Babylonian town of Nippur, dating from the first half of the 3rd millennium BC, was found to have rooms filled with clay tablets.” 

Also, according to Britannica.com, “A similar collection of Assyrian clay tablets of the 2nd millennium BC was found at Tell-el Amarna in Egypt. Ashrbanipal, the last of the great kings of Assyria, maintained an archive of some 25,000 tablets, collected from temples throughout his kingdom.” 

Moving to Greece, the first important institutional libraries in Athens arose during the 4th century BC with the great schools of philosophy. The texts of the great schools of philosophy were “Written on perishable materials like papyrus and parchment.” 

Brittanica.com states, “A full edition of Aristotle’s library was prepared from surviving texts by Andronicus of Rhodes and Tyrannion in Rome about 60 BC.” Those copies would go on to form the basis of the Library of Alexandria, “Whose collection of papyrus and vellum scrolls are said to have numbered hundreds of thousands.”  

Moving ahead thousands of years, modern public libraries serve as places for the community to read and access the internet free of charge. 

Let’s look at three fun library facts from National Today. 

1. The largest library in the world is The Library of Congress in the U.S. with over 168 million items. 

2. The most stolen book in the world is the Guinness Book of World Records.

3. There are now 150 libraries around the world where, instead of books, you                      can listen to humans and their stories.

You can visit the Cedar City Library at 303 North 100 East

And the St. George Library at 88 West 100 South