Library of Congress

Most historians agree that the decline of the Great Library of Alexandria was due to what endangers libraries of the present day--general indifference and bureaucratic neglect.

Alexandria's first librarian, Zenodotus, attempted to put this mass of scrolls in order. The first scrolls were inventoried and then organized alphabetically, with a tag affixed to the end of each scroll indicating the author, title, and subject. These three categories came to define the traditional card catalog and are still the cornerstone of library cataloging.

library catalogs are a tangible example of humanity’s effort to establish and preserve the possibility of order.