I was looking up the history of Aristotle’s personal library, which was supposedly the seed for the first Roman public library in 37 BC. Parts of his library were also supposedly brought to Alexandria to form a portion of that great historical project, as well. I was looking it up because the story of Aristotle’s personal library is a tidbit in this fascinating article (pdf) by Professor Merlin Donald entitled Memory Palaces: The Revolutionary Function of Libraries.
Besides loving that article, having read it multiple times, in the course of looking up Aristotle’s personal library, I found a website called From Cave Paintings to the Internet: Chronological and Thematic Studies on the History of Information and Media. I don’t normally gush about websites. Most websites are trivial. But this one is remarkable – it is one man’s (Jeremy Norman) compendium of the history and evolution of an interesting field of knowledge, and it is superbly done. It is well referenced, well documented, well written. And the site itself is lovely – that is, nicely designed and cared for. I find so few really deep, rich websites these days, especially sites that are created by a single person. The site sells itself, though, so visit.
http://www.historyofinformation.com/
No related posts.
