International and Comparative Librarianship History Revisited : First Facts About Libraries

This collection is inspired by many sites that have Interesting Facts About Libraries (sadly, many facts don't have an authentic source). 

Here are just a few “secrets” or little-known first facts about libraries, with a source:

1.  Bookboat: The first floating library service began in 1959. "Epos" - Norway's floating library, by Anne Marie Oevstegaard. [source]
2. The World's Oldest Library. Hans H. Wellisch. "Almost all present descriptions of ancient libraries consider the Library of Ashurbanipal, dating from the 7thc BC and discovered around 1850" [source] [see also:  Library of King Ashurbanipal Web Page]
3. The world's biggest library is The Library of Congress [source]
4. The smallest library in the world has appeared on the streets of New York City, it has space for just one reader at a time. - Recommendation : Read a short book (under 150 pages) or a book with a yellow cover [source]
5. The Harvard University library houses a collection of books bound in human skin. [source]
6. The latest news maker: A Shikara ride to the library: Innovative cafe near Dal lake is book lovers' paradise in J&K offering rare books of Kashmiri history  [source]
7. One of the world's biggest books claimed headlines about Bhutan [source]
8. The highest library in the World at 230.9 m (757 ft 6 in), at the JW Marriott in Shanghai - China [source]
9. The Filipino librarian has the distinction of being the first librarian in the world to be professionalized through the legislative process. [source]
10.  The first Bookmobile (mobile library) - The British Workman  reported in 1857  a perambulating library operating in a circle of eight villages in Cumbria. [source]
11. The world´s most overdue library book: The Oregonian: Borrower returns books 52 years late to Portland State University's library, with unsigned note [source]
12. The Most Stolen Books From Libraries : The Guinness Book of Records tops the list.[source]
13. There are more public libraries than McDonald's in the U.S.- a total of 16,604 including branches [source]
14. The Firstthe nation's first lending library in the United States : Though the Library of Congress was the first official post-revolutionary library, it was not the first governmental library in the United States. The history of the first governmental library stretches back to 1731, when Benjamin Franklin and several of his friends in the Junto society founded The Library Company as a non-profit.[source]
15. The first library catalog : ... the Seven Epitomes, the first library catalog to establish the bibliographic model in imperial China. [source]
16. The first comprehensive Arabic national bibliography was compiled by Ibn al-Nadim, ' Kitab al fihrist' [source]
17. 1 in 3 public libraries across the U.S.A. have Facebook accounts [source]
18. The first library classification system, eisted during the Han Dynasty, and the first book notation system as well. [source]
19. U.S. public libraries were some of the first institutions to be racially integrated because whites generally didn’t want to put up much of a fight about them. Some were even ashamed at the time to learn that libraries were segregated. [Source]
20. Authors get paid every time UK or Irish libraries lend their books. [Source]

Read more: Wayne A. Wiegand & Donald G. Jr. Davis, ed.  Encyclopedia of Library History (Garland Reference Library of Social Science)