The Schole Lybrarie: Images from Our Past

A review of the literature shows that not only is there no comprehensive published history of school libraries, but that school libraries are inadequately covered in the general histories of education and librarianship. Those writers who do discuss the history of school libraries tend to assume that they are a more recent phenomenon than they actually are; indeed, some assume they are a 20th-century development. This article discusses school libraries as they existed in four different times and places: in the educational foundations of medieval England; in the English grammar schools of the 16th and 17th centuries; in the schools of 19th-century Britain; and in the 19th-century common schools of the United States. These four "snapshots" of school libraries in the past show that school libraries have existed in schools since at least the 8th century. These early school libraries would have been very different from school libraries today, just as schools now are very different from their predecessors of earlier centuries.