Libraries occupied a central place in the organization and reproduction of pre-modern knowledge cultures.  Texts had been assembled in archives of various kinds from the Bronze Age, but most were of only ephemeral interest. Only when writing was deployed to create works intended to have lasting value – as literature, as contributions to science, or as records of historical investigations or sacred revelations – did it become necessary to actively curate them. In a world before printing, the risk that any given book – on papyrus or parchment, clay tablets or wooden ones, on rolls or in codices –would simply...