History is the distillation of evidence surviving the past.
– OSCAR HANDLIN, Truth in History (1979)
Since the first Adam who beheld the night and the day and the shape of his own hand, men have made up stories and have fixed in stone, in metal, or on parchment whatever the world includes or dreams create. Here is the fruit of their labor: the Library…The faithless say that if it were to burn, history would burn with it. They are wrong. Unceasing human work gave birth to this infinity of books. If of them all not even one remained, man would again beget each page and every line.
– JORGE LUIS BORGES,
regarding the Library of Alexandria
Libraries are the memory of mankind.
– JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE