This volume is the first detailed survey of libraries in Britain and Ireland up to the Civil War. It traces the transition from collections of books without a fixed local habitation to the library, chiefly of printed books, much as we know it today. It examines changing patterns in the formation of book collections in the earlier medieval period, traces the combined impact of the activities of the mendicant orders and the scholarship of the universities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the adoption of the library room and the growth of private book collections in the fourteenth and fifteenth. The volume then focuses upon the dispersal of the monastic libraries in the mid-sixteenth centuries, the creation of new types of library, and finally, the steps whereby the collections amassed by antiquaries came to form the bases of the national and institutional libraries of Britain and Ireland.

The Public Libraries Act of 1850 founded a tradition of public provision and service which continues today, and national and academic libraries have grown and multiplied accordingly. Libraries have become an industry rather than a localized phenomenon, and librarianship has developed from a scholarly craft to a scientific profession. The essays in this volume present a picture of great diversity, covering public, national, academic, subscription and private libraries. The users of libraries are an important part of their history and are considered here in detail, alongside the development of the library profession and the impact of new information technologies.