Books by John Willis Clark
“It is an absolutely fantastic historical survey, very detailed, very meticulous scholarship. He goes and visits all the libraries he discusses, right from the ancient world. He’s in an era which is just learning about the excavations in Mesopotamia by Austen Henry Layard, which uncovered the libraries of Ashurbanipal…I still go to this book for basic information as a starting point. Someday, I’d quite like to update it in the kind of detail that he has. He pulls together a whole variety of sources to give this long overview over 2,000 years.” Read more...
Richard Ovenden, Librarian
Interviews where books by John Willis Clark were recommended
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1
The Care of Books: An Essay on the Development of Libraries and Their Fittings, From the Earliest Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century
by John Willis Clark -
2
Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life
by Eric Klinenberg -
3
The Library Book
by Susan Orlean -
4
The Library: A World History
by James Campbell & Will Pryce (photographer) -
5
The Library at Night
by Alberto Manguel
The best books on Libraries, recommended by Richard Ovenden
The best books on Libraries, recommended by Richard Ovenden
Knowledge is power and nowhere has it been better preserved down the millennia than in libraries. Here Richard Ovenden, author of Burning the Books and the librarian in charge of Oxford University’s Bodleian Libraries, talks us through books that shed light on what libraries are and what they do, and why they remain absolutely vital in our digital age.
