LIBEARY 475 LIBYIl precession of the equinoxes it now con- tains the constellation Virgo. The sun enters it about Sept. 23. LIBRARY, the name given to a col- lection of books, and to the building in which it is located. Libraries existed in ancient Egypt and Assyria, and Pisis- tratus is credited with the honor of in- troducing a public library at Athens about 337 B. c. By far the most cele- brated library of antiquity was the Alexandrian. In the West libraries of note were founded in the second half of the 8th century by the encouragement of Charlemagne. In France one of the most celebrated was that in the abbey St. Germain des Pres, near Paris. In Germany, the libraries of Fulda, Corvey, and in the 11th century that of Hirschau, were valuable. In Spain, in the 12th century, the Moors had 70 public II- Milan, Bologna, Naples, and the Advo- cates', Edinburgh. The Vatican library, Rome, and the Bodleian, Oxford, are particularly valuable for rare books and MSS. The spread of education develop- ing a taste for knowledge, has led all highly civilized nations to establish ex- tensive Public Library systems consist- ing of small libraries easy of access for the people, each provided with books that are most in demand in that section of the country. The Public Library system of the United States may be said to ex- tend to every comer of the country. By means of the Dept. of Traveling Libra- ries books are provided for persons liv- ing in remote country districts. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. See CON- GRESS, Library of. LIBRETTO, the book of an opera. Among the most noteworthy librettists LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, WASHINGTON, D. C. braries, of which that of Cordova con- tained 250,000 volumes. In Britain and Italy libraries were also founded with great zeal, particularly in the former country, by Richard Aungerville; in the latter by Petrarch, Boccaccio, and others. After the invention of the art of print- ing this was done more easily and at less expense. The principal libraries of modern times are the national library at Paris, with nearly 2,300,000 books and 10,000 MSS., and the British Museum library, London, with over 1,500,000 books and 100,000 MSS. The central court library at Munich, the imperial library at St. Petersburg, and the royal library at Berlin have each over 1,000,- 000 volumes and thousands of MSS. Other large and valuable libraries are the imperial library at Vienna; the royal libraries at Stuttgart, Dresden, and Copenhagen; the university libraries of Genoa, Prague, Gottingen, Upsala, Ox- ford, Cambridge, and Dublin; also the libraries of Moscow, Venice, Florence, have been Metastasio, Calzabigi, and Felix Romano in Italy; Quinault, Mar- montel. Scribe, Barbier, Meilhac and Halevy, as well as Sardou, in France; the poet Geibel (who wrote "Loreley" for Mendelssohn), and Schikaneder (who wrote the "Zauberflote," etc., for Mo- zart) in Germany; and Gay, Alfred Bunn, Edward Fitzball, Theodore Hook, Planche, and Gilbert in England. Wag- ner stands alone, in that, after the "Fly- ing Dutchman," he himself wrote the librettos of his great music-dramas. LIBYA, the name given by the oldest geographers to Africa. In Homer and Hesiod, it denoted the whole of this quar- ter of the globe, except Egypt; in Herod- otus, occasionally, the entire continent; but it is also applied by others to the N. part of the country, from Egypt and the Arabian Gulf W, to Mount Atlas. The great sandy tract of which the Sahara forms the principal part, was called the Libyan Desert.
