What the First Librarian Knew

What was the first library, and what can ancient classification systems teach us about how we organize knowledge today? This episode traces the history of libraries from the clay tablets of Ebla (2500 BCE) through Ashurbanipal's comprehensive collection at Nineveh, the legendary Library of Alexandria, medieval monastic libraries, and the classification systems of Dewey and Cutter. We explore how every catalog is an argument about what matters — and what libraries become when physical books are no longer the center of gravity.