PREFACE
tives. Such value as they have lies chiefly in the fact that those who could do the work better do not do it at all.
Essays on Antediluvian Libraries, Medieval Libraries, Some Old Egyptian Librarians, etc., have been previously published without any attempt at complete outline of the subjects, but the present series commencing with "The Beginnings of Libraries" (1914) and followed by this volume on "Biblical Libraries," aims slightly to reshape the material of each essay so as to make of it an outline map or sketch of the whole period with which it has to do, without however attempting to fill in the detail of anything but the particular subject or to radically change the method and general style appropriate to the occasion for which it was written. The Beginnings of Libraries covered the legendary, prehistoric, and primitive period, taking to perhaps 3400 B.C. Biblical Libraries takes up the matter at
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