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Greek and Roman Libraries and Information Centers

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This paper seeks to explain in detail the role that the Greeks and the Romans played in the development of libraries and communication during the Ancient times. According to (www.wikepidia) the word library comes from the word liber, the latin word for “book” and has a meaning of a building or room containing collections of books, periodicals, and sometimes films and recorded music for people to read, borrow, or collection of books and periodicals held in such a building or room. Communication means “any act by which one person gives to or receives from another person information about that person's needs, desires, perceptions, knowledge, or affective states. Communication may be intentional or unintentional, may involve conventional or unconventional signals, may take linguistic or nonlinguistic forms, and may occur through spoken or other modes.” (library laws 2012). According to Microsoft Encarta (2010), Civilisation of libraries and communication was first known in Ancient Greece in the early part of the second millennium B.C, when Crete became the centre of a highly developed civilisation which spread to the mainland of Greece and before the end of the fifteenth century B.C, throughout the entire Aegean area. The Cretans had developed the art of writing from the pictographic system to a cursive form, which was called Linear A and a by the fifteenth century it came to be called Linear B. Linear B is said to be a form of early Greece language spoken by the Mycenaeans who occupied Knosses and was used for accounting. In the 500s B.C Pissistratus who ruled Athens, and Polycrates, the ruler of Samos, both began constructing what could be considered public libraries though these only served a small percentage of the total population of wealthy people. Most of the important libraries of ancient Greece were established during the Helenistice Age which is a period that was characterised by the spread of Greek culture and leaning through the conquests of Alexander and his successors, the creation of a new Greece cities and the development of monarchal governments. These libraries where located at Alexandria in Egypt and in the Kingdom of Pergamum in Asia Minor. The famous library of Alexandria according to legend(2012), contained probably the largest collection in the ancient world that is more than 400,000 items. This Library was founded by King Ptolemy I before his death in 283 BC but his son, Ptolemy II was most responsible for expanding the library’s collection. After inquiring remnants of the library amassed by Aristotle, Ptolemy II hired scribes and scholars to collect authenticate, copy, and edit the works of all mown Greek philosophers, dramatist, and poets and to translate the sacred texts of other cultures in Greek. These texts were transcribed onto one side of papyrus scrolls made out of an easily

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