Most folks, especially if they are accumulators rather than collectors, do not pay much attention to the security of their private libraries. Their books are not rare, not in Fine condition, not finely bound, and would represent no great financial loss if they all suddenly disappeared.
Folks whose books do, however, require such security have lots of options available to them: biometric keypads for controlled access, RFID detection systems, tail tags and so on.
Up until roughly the 18th century, virtually all books were considered valuable. Paper was expensive, and because much of the population was illiterate, books were nowhere near as commonplace as they are today. As we noted in a previous post, this led monasteries and libraries to store their books in locked chests, in locked cupboards or chained to desks or shelves:
Chained books are known as early as the 12th century, and the library at Merton College, Oxford ("the world’s oldest continuously functioning library for university academics and students") can trace its chaining of books to 1284 (such books having previously resided in a chest bound by three locks). Chaining of books probably was preferred by most patrons to another popular option, locking readers in cages.
Great Britain's Hereford Cathedral, which chained its books until almost the middle of the 19th century, is the world's largest surviving chained library. It notes that the practice was
...the most widespread and effective security system in European libraries from the middle ages to the eighteenth century, and Hereford Cathedral's seventeenth-century Chained Library is the largest to survive with all its chains, rods and locks intact.
A chain is attached at one end to the front cover of each book; the other end is slotted on to a rod running along the bottom of each shelf. The system allows a book to be taken from the shelf and read at the desk, but not to be removed from the bookcase.
The books are shelved with their foredges, rather than their spines, facing the reader (the wrong way round to us); this allows the book to be lifted down and opened without needing to be turned around - thus avoiding tangling the chain.
In 1996 a specially designed, environmentally controlled New Library Building was erected within which to house this famous chained library for the edification and enjoyment of future generations.
Great Britain also is home to the world's second largest surviving chained library, that of Wimborne Minster. Both make for a great excuse to visit the UK.
Very few books about chained libraries have been published. Burnett Streeter's The Chained Library; a Survey of Four Centuries in the Evolution of the English Library (1931) remains the best general survey (though one is more likely to encounter the 1970 Burt Franklin reprint than the original Macmillan & Co. publication)....
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