Chained library

As a chain book (Latin: liber catenatus, chained book ) is a book from the Middle Ages or the early modern period referred to as exhibiting the traces of library practice to protect the books, especially the relics, mostly by iron shackling.

Old practice

In the medieval and early modern libraries consistently where the monasteries, the books were designed to or below the lectern and there or at fixed on the consoles running bars with chains in order to preserve their order and to protect them against unauthorized removal. The chains also prevented that the heavy volumes suffered from falling damage. They could be open, so that a controlled removal of the books was possible.

Usually, this was done on the upper back cover of a book, a stopper made ​​of metal, usually mounted in iron, in which the chain could be attached. Chain books are rarely obtained because since the 16th century in the development of librarianship, this form of security increasingly was unnecessary and at the shelf placement in modern public or private book collections, the devices were proven and removed as bulky. Not infrequently, however, the attacks of the chains or making the necessary holes in the covers earlier prints, however, still remain. Two of the few places where the old stock of books chain is in its original condition, the 1452 donated Malatesta Library in Cesena and the Laurentian Library in Florence.

New practice

The high moral and material value, which formerly approached the manuscripts of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Print, lost especially in the wake of mass printing time since the 19th century for the book as such completely; the effort for the protection of a single printed book today by chains, eg in a library that consistently would exceed its value by far.

Exceptions can however also find that in the present. Thus, the procedures to secure Books by chains, sometimes in public places, the books for reference or to provide assessment, use; For example, set the museums their regulated and expensive catalogs to current exhibitions to the public often in chained form ready for viewing. In libraries, sometimes inventories or registers are attached to multi-volume works with chains or wire ropes, so they are always at hand and not by users can be adjusted ( by mistake or on purpose ). Even guests or visitors books which are displayed in public places and where can subscribe Visitors are sometimes attached.