LIBRARY SCIENCE. – Library science (or, as it was also called with a term that did not gain currency, *bibliotecologia*) is the science (others say: the art or the service) of libraries, of which it studies all operations, from construction to administration. More briefly, library science teaches how to establish and operate libraries.
An organization of libraries, more or less scientific or rudimentary, has always existed since collections of books came into being: for unorganized collections of books, in a jumble, without catalogues, are called storerooms, repositories, not libraries. The concept of a library entails that of order and service.
In antiquity, however, the approach was rather empirical, in the sense that a learned person, fond of books, endowed with orderliness and precision, but not professionally trained, was usually entrusted with keeping a library in order; hence the variety of organizational criteria. In modern times, the librarian’s role has become a distinct profession, requiring theoretical and practical training provided in specialized schools. These schools, known as schools for librarians or schools of library science, impart instruction in all library services: construction and selection of premises, arrangement of furniture, acquisition and organization of books, accessioning, registration, classification, cataloguing, distribution to the public, consultation, reading, lending, verification, etc. They also provide supplementary disciplines to equip librarians with the necessary culture for their duties: history of the book, bibliography and library science, knowledge of books and specialized culture (in a music library, for instance, a librarian would require knowledge of music).
The profession of librarian has thus become autonomous even in relation to that of the archivist-paleographer, with which it was recently fused. One attends to printed books, the other to manuscript documents.
In individual monasteries and at episcopal or chapter schools, manuscript books were catalogued and made available for reading under specific rules and precautions, especially against readers with rapacious or dirty hands. The bibliophile and librarian who spoke with love of books (*philobiblion*), around the mid-14th century, was the English bishop Richard de Bury (b. near Bury in 1287, d. 1345), a friend of another great bibliophile, Francesco Petrarca, whom he met in Avignon; while Pedro de Luna, antipope under the name of Benedict XII (d. 1424), reorganized the papal library in Avignon, establishing rules for the placement and classification of manuscripts.
These monastic libraries are the public libraries of the Middle Ages. At a Synod held in Paris in 1212, it was decreed that every religious order was forbidden to formulate vows against lending their books to those in need; since lending is counted among the principal works of mercy, and any “anathema” binding manuscripts was declared null and void.
The care of books became a passion of Humanism, when Nicholas V established or reconstituted the Vatican Library “for the common convenience of learned men.”
To prevent theft of manuscripts, volumes were, as elsewhere, “chained” to the desk.
In the bibliophilic fervor, numerous rules were laid down for the proper management of books. The Duke of Urbino drew up regulations for his famous collection, and in every substantial library some rules were established and enforced. The norms compiled by the Benedictine Floriano Trefler (1483–1565), by the Jesuits Francesco Sacchini (1570–1625) and Giovanni Garnier (1628–1681), by Archbishop Giusto Fontanini (1666–1736), and by the Theatine Paolo M. Paciaudi (1710–1755) were printed; indeed, as late as 1863, the 4th edition of Paciaudi’s work *Il bibliotecario diretto nel formare, classare e continuare una pubblica biblioteca* was reprinted in Rome.
In the 19th century, the field of libraries was dominated by the concern to establish fixed and uniform rules for cataloguing. From the most rational cataloguing sprang the establishment of schools to train cataloguers and, in general, librarians capable of all services; and this establishment marked the first half of the 20th century.
Schools existed even earlier: suffice it to recall the famous *École des Chartes*, founded in Paris in 1821, and the Library School opened at Columbia College (now University) in New York by Melville Dewey in 1887. In Italy, a school of archival science and paleography operated in Florence from 1880. In 1923, the Ministry of Education established various schools for librarians at universities.
Under Pius XI, a School of Library Science was established in the Vatican to complement the extensive technical modernization of the papal library undertaken by that Pontiff. The School aimed to place the professional and technical experience of the Vatican Library at the disposal first of the clergy and religious communities, for the training of librarians in seminaries, schools, and religious houses, and then at the disposal of all. It complemented the teaching of the School of Paleography and Diplomatics, which had existed for half a century at the Vatican Secret Archive, and gave practical realization and great development to the instructions already issued in 1902, 1907, and 1923 by the Secretariat of State to Italian bishops for the orderly management of archives and libraries; these instructions had been drafted with notable expertise by Fr. Francesco Ehrle, then Prefect of the Vatican Library.
The courses of the new School, begun in 1934, were attended by ecclesiastical and lay students from every nation. The subjects taught were thus established: bibliography, cataloguing and classification, general organization and library services, with additional lectures on the history of the book, the use of photography, the preservation and restoration of printed materials, etc.
The aim of this reorganization is to make books, periodicals, prints, photographs, etc., in a collection as useful as possible for social utility, serving scholars more readily and extensively, understanding the library not only as a place to gather books but also to serve readers. This aim gives the new profile to the librarian, no longer seen merely as a guardian of treasures but also as a host to those who treasure knowledge. Informed reading shapes and renews; and the librarian collaborates with the reader in the ceremony of the right book and works with schools in the education of pupils.
Graduates of the Vatican School of Library Science have already reorganized and directed ecclesiastical libraries in several countries; and the *Norme per la catalogazione degli stampati* [Rules for the Cataloguing of Printed Materials], drawn up by the Vatican Library—now the principal textbook of the School—have been translated into Spanish, English, and French, and applied even in non-ecclesiastical libraries on both sides of the Atlantic (v. also CATALOGUE; CLASSIFICATION, systems of).