Abstract
Paper presented at the Conference: Non scholae sed vitae discimus, trans lated by Antje Cockrill. Traces the historical development of the school library in Europe, back to its roots in the traditions of the academies of Greece, the manuscripts of Christian convent schools, and the schools in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but comments on the difficulty of finding a connection between the current, future-oriented treatment of school libraries with this tradition. Concludes that the major reasons for the lack of historical continuity in the development of European school libraries is that for centuries certain features evolved in different ways at varying speeds and in different com binations. These features include: the democratization of knowledge; the development of a mandatory school system under government control; and the combination of the concept of the public library with the demand for generally accessible book and media collections in schools.
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