Seven Miles of Shelves New Library in Vatican

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 620, 23 March 1929, Page 28

Seven Miles of Shelves New Library in Vatican

aHE new Vatican library, which will house the treasured volumes of old world civilisation, is nearing completion. signed the building and is supervising its construction. He is especially interested in the work, because before his election to the pontificate he was head of the Ambrosian Library at Milan, and the old Vatican Library at Rome.

More than seven miles of light steel shelving, three stories high, resembling the skeleton of an American skyscraper, were required to house the Vatican collection. Each deck floor has been covered with marble.

The task of cataloguing the great collection, now practically finished, has been accomplished with the aid ofr American library experts and more

particularly with the aid of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, under whose direction four members of the Vatican staff recently made a year’s study of American library methods. By introducing the index and filing systems used in the Library of Congress at Washington, students will be enabled for the first time to consult rare volumes never before available for research. The new library edifice is constructed on the plot of ground adjoining the courtyard built by Julius IT., and formerly used as a promenade by the Popes. In the Vatican library are the famous Yemen collection of Arabian manuscripts, which came into the Pope’s possession in 1922, after Vatican authorities had negotiated for them for 12 years. In that same year Pope Pius procured the collection of Prince Chigi, which alone contains over 3,000 manuscripts.