The Chained Library,Before the printing press was introduced to Europe, books were rare and expensiv

The Chained Library,Before the printing press was introduced to Europe, books were rare and expensive tomes that were not common in everyday life.  Every book had to be hand written and decorated with an extreme attention to detail and an eye for perfection.  Thus skilled scribes not only had to be literate, a specialty skill through most of human history, but also a skilled artist and calligrapher.  Thus books were exceptionally valuable, practically worth its weight in gold, a strange concept to people with access to cheap paperbacks and e-books.  To protect books from theft, libraries during the Middle Ages were what we now call “chained libraries”.  On each and every book was a lock and chain connected to the spine of the book which connected the book to the bookshelf. The chain was long enough so that a person could take a book to a nearby chair of table, but not remove it from the library.  Typically, the books were placed on the bookshelf backwards (spine first) in order to prevent entanglement with other chains.Chained libraries were most common during the Middle Ages but lasted up to the 18th century.  The death of the chained library came with the introduction of the printing press in Europe, which allowed books to be published cheaply en masse.  Today only a handful of chained libraries remain operating for the sake of preserving an old tradition. -- source link

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