April 9, 2015

Welcome to the New Thursday Thirteen! Thank you for joining us!

April showers bring May flowers! How's the weather in your corner of the world? I hope to see good ol' California having rain soon to end that drought. We need a little sunshine in other parts of the world! Too bad we couldn't truck all that snow from Boston to Los Angeles, eh?

We are looking forward to seeing what Thursday brings on your blogs!

Here's a fun fact for this date:

On April 9, 1833, the town council in Peterborough, New Hampshire, voted to implement the first tax-supported library in the modern era. The earliest known libraries date back to ancient Egypt in 1900 B.C.

Over 30,000 clay tablets from the Library of Ashurbanipal have been discovered at Nineveh, an ancient Mesopotamian city. The cache dates back to around 700 B.C. and is a wealth of ancient literary, religious and administrative work.

The 17th and 18th centuries include what is known as a golden age of libraries; during this some of the more important libraries were founded in Europe. At the start of the 18th century, libraries were becoming increasingly public and were more frequently lending libraries. The 18th century saw the switch from closed parochial libraries to lending libraries. Before this time, public libraries were parochial in nature and libraries frequently chained their books to desks. Libraries also were not uniformly open to the public

The first true national library was founded in 1753 as part of the British Museum. This new institution was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public and aiming to collect everything.

And here's Mr. Linky! Thanks for joining us!