Occasional Paper No. 2
Wordlists for Libraries and Closely Related Phenomena in Different Manuscript Cultures from Asia, Africa and Europe
Martin Delhey, Vito Lorusso et al.
In the present paper, we are collecting indigenous terms that are more or less equivalent to the English word “library.” With the word “library” we have mainly in mind the most usual way in which the English term is used, namely library as a collection of books and as a designation for the place that contains these books. We are taking into consideration institutionalized libraries as well as those that are not institutionalized (for instance, collections for private personal use). From the perspective of use, the quantity of books collected does not matter (Richardson 1914: 8), either.
In scholarly publications, the meaning of the word “library” is sometimes also extended to a multitude of texts collected into one volume (“one-volume library,” i.e. MTM). Moreover, Too (2010: 84), for instance, also speaks of types of libraries in which no physical objects are involved (“walking libraries” or “memory libraries”). In all these cases, we do not collect systematically indigenous equivalents. However, if in a specific culture a term for library can also be used in such a metaphorical way, this will be noted. For the time being, general terms for the actors involved, e.g. “librarian,” are only taken into consideration in the case of some manuscript cultures. Similarly, other terms for physical places where written documents are stored such as “archive” and “chests” are not systematically collected.
It is obviously far from easy to find a definition of the term “library,” which works equally well for all manuscript cultures. Rather than forcing all related phenomena into the Procrustean bed of a common definition, it seems to be more advisable to use other tools for a systematic comparison of all cultures. One possible way to approach this task is to collect indigenous terms for the sake of understanding how the manuscript cultures themselves conceptualise(d) book collections.
CSMC's Occasional Papers
The Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures regularly hosts meetings to discuss the theory, terminology and other issues in manuscriptology. Several of its members – philologists, historians, art historians, linguists and others – collectively engage in contributing to the systematic and historical study of manuscript cultures. The documents are individual contributions and drafts reflecting some of the provisional results of the Centre’s activities.
The research for this paper was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) within the Sonderforschungsbereich 950 (SFB 950). The research was conducted within the scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at Universität Hamburg.
