Earliest known Church library was founded in Rome by Pope Damasus I in the Church of S. Lorenzo. It held a basic Christian collection of the Bible and related works, as well as classical works.

Codex format of book replaces the roll format that was most common during Ancient times.

Basics are further developed:

PEN: The quill pen replaces the Roman reed pen. A quill pen (primary wing feather of a bird) has the advantage of a tip that can be sharpened repeatedly.

INK: From the Latin "encaustum" (something burnt in") and made of iron salt & oak galls, ink literally burns itself into the surface.

Saint Benedict founds the Benedictine Order and the monastery of Monte Cassino in 529. The Regula, which defines Benedictine monastic rules, makes several comments about the importance of reading. When Monte Cassino is destroyed in 585 by the Lombards, the monks move to Rome. Under the influence of Pope Gregory the Great book production becomes an important part of Benedictine work. This includes the copying and preservation of Ancient manuscripts. Benedictine monasteries kept books in four physical areas—the choir, monks’ cells, the refectory, and the infirmary—because reading was prescribed for all these areas.

The plague runs rampant in Europe from 542 to 594 and cuts the population in half.

St. Columba, from Ireland, founds a monastery on the island of Iona (in modern day Scotland). The scriptoria here was famous for creating manuscripts with beautiful Insular style decoration.

During the reign of Pope Gregory the Great (590-604), Rome becomes a major pilgrimage center. Many pilgrims wish to take books home with them, which further encourages the production of books in the monasteries. One such pilgrim is Benedict Biscop, an Englishman, who makes five trips to Rome to obtain books for the monasteries he has founded at Wearmouth and Jarrow in Northumbria.

The first canons against damaging or stealing books are created at the Council of Torillo in 692. Such laws continue throughout the Middle Ages.

In the Merovingian period (roughly 400 to 750), in what is now modern France and the Rhineland, there are over 220 monasteries. Many of these have scriptoria and libraries. Today fewer than 300 manuscripts survive from these because political stability was lacking for the development of large, permanent libraries.

Another form of aural communication, the church bell, appears in Rome in 604.

The Benedictine monastery of St. Gall is founded in what we now call Northern Switzerland. It becomes the most important center of learning north of the Alps and its scriptorium creates a famous library.

Bede, who was tutored by Benedict Biscop in Northumbria and studied in the libraries at Wearmouth and Jarrow, writes his famous Ecclesiastical History of the English People around 731.

Words begin to be separated in manuscripts; this is commonplace by the 11^th century. Spaces between words and the beginnings of punctuation help with oral reading, which is the norm, but also allows for the development of silent reading.

Alcuin, who retired from the Palace School in Aachen in 796, becomes the Abbot of Tours monastery and encourages work on the Carolingian miniscule script. This is the forerunner of lower case Roman type.

Dictionaries are developed by scholars concerned with the standardization of Latin, with reviving Greek, and with defining the vernacular.

The first European university is founded in 850 at Salerno, Italy.

The musical staff is created, becoming the standard for music notation.

Calibrated candles begin to be used in England for measuring time.

During the Middle Ages, our alphabet is developed into its finished version as used today.

Camera Obscura is invented.

The Calendar of Days and Book of Hours evolves. Tiny missals for personal use, these books include a yearly guide to important days in the Church (e.g. feast days, saint days), seasonal information for agriculture, and are guides to all appropriate monthly and daily activities.

The Information Infrastructure now includes a network: Romanesque pilgrimage routes. Linking France, Spain, and Italy, the pilgrimage roads connect the religious centers of Western Europe. There is a new mobility in society, thus opening communication between towns, countries, and the people.

First encyclopaedia appears c.1040.

Earliest attempts to catalog a library collection by subject takes place in the Le Puy cathedral collection.

In 1083 an Irish monk named Marianus Scotus writes a world history, from creation to 1082.

The astrolabe, used for astronomical measurements and calculations, arrives in Europe. It was developed by Muslim scientists two centuries earlier.

The term library, for a separate building holding books, comes into common usage.

Manuscript copying, which had been the realm of monks, now becomes the work of professional scribes. These scribes could travel to copy books; they also were employed for creating documents needed by governments.

Another road – this one to the Middle East via the Crusades – brings new ideas and technology to Western Europe throughout the 12^th and 13^th centuries. Results include exposure to Arabic science, philosophy, and important for the next centuries: new shipbuilding techniques.

The art of making paper arrives from the East through the Moors in Spain. Paper is not widely available until the 13^th century.

The compass is first used for navigation.

Universities (and their libraries) are established at Oxford (1149) and Paris (1160), which creates a greater demand for books. A piecemeal (pecia) copying system is developed to increase the speed and lower the cost of creating new books. At least a half dozen more universities are founded in the next century. In university libraries, books are literally chained to their places and collections are divided into major and minor libraries. The latter provided duplicate copies that could be used more freely; eventually lending began.

Reference services first appear in University libraries.

Librarians begin to experiment with union catalogs as a way to coordinate collection development and to identify interlibrary loan sources.

During the Gothic Period, the oral tradition continues to be a primary tool of communication in the secular world. Given freedom of speech, the troubadours, poets, and storytellers relate versions of history through epic poems and heroic songs. They also present debate on ideas in religion, metaphysics, and love, and report the deeds and adventures of famous heroes. Court jesters appear at the beginning of the next century.

Vernacular literature enters a prolific period.

A large collection of books in London and Oxford is built up by the mendicant orders, the Franciscans and Dominicans.

The Sorbonne in Paris is founded in 1257 and provides the first centralized library for the University of Paris. By 1289 it has 1,000 titles and by 1338 it has a collection of 1,700 volumes.

Access to library material moves from alphabetization to tables of contents, indexing, and bibliographies.

Reference work dominates monasteries and university libraries; this includes the writing of reference works that provide access to primary sources and secondary commentaries.

In 1229 the Inquisition in Toulouse forbids laymen to read the Bible (perhaps a Church backlash against growing literacy?).

Roger Bacon invents the magnifying glass in 1250.

The psalter is replaced by the book of hours as the primary text for private worship. Books of hours become a major artistic outlet for manuscript illuminators.

The first public clock appears in Milan in 1335, and later in the century clocks appear for domestic use.

Universities begin to experiment with open stacks. The librarian’s pulpit is in a prominent position at the front of the room. Reference librarians are assigned to "work the floor."

Compiled by Franciscan monks, the Registrum liborum Angliae (catalog of books in England) is the oldest known attempt at compiling a large-scale catalog.

The Dover catalog, dated 1389, provides an unusually large amount of information for the time: author, short title, copy derivation, contents, and pagination.

Petrarch bequeaths his library of 1500 works to Venice (45 survive today).

The first national library established in Paris by Charles V.

Between 1347 and 1351 the Black Death, another plague, kills an estimated 75 million people in Europe.

The piecemeal (pecia) system of copying manuscripts is abandoned; the market for books has diminished significantly because of the Black Death and the Hundred Years War.

The private library of Judah Leon Mosconi, a Jewish man in Majorca, was supposed to be auctioned in 1377 but was instead confiscated by the king of Aragon.

Block printing being used throughout Europe. Early experiments with movable type take place in Limoges.