Learning Commons Episode 1: Timeless Ideas in Ontario and Nineveh

SUMMARY
Examination of the concept of the learning commons begins with reference to Together for Learning from the OSLA. The ancient library at Nineveh provides a context for such concepts as organizing knowledge for power and civilization.


A Timeless Idea: The Learning Commons

Libraries, and in our case school libraries, are now examining the concept of the learning commons as a major theme for 21st century learning. Over the next weeks, I want to add to the narrative about the learning commons, both theoretically and practically, with reference to past, present, and future explorations.

I have already referenced the great work done by the Ontario School Library Association in Together for Learning: School Libraries and the Emergence of the Learning Commons. This 2010 document is having a global impact in its call for change:

A Learning Commons is a vibrant, whole-school approach, presenting exciting opportunities for collaboration among teachers, teacher-librarians and students. Within a Learning Commons, new relationships are formed between learners, new technologies are realized and utilized, and both students and educators prepare for the future as they learn new ways to learn (p.3).

I will be launching a new series on the learning commons in coming weeks. I will also be offering teacher-librarians a unique opportunity to join a special virtual commons that could help to realize this change. Along the way, I want to put this innovative idea within the context of past libraries: their history, purpose, characteristics, and legacy for our times. I'll start my narrative with the oldest western example we know anything about.

Western representation of the royal palace at Nineveh

http://looklex.com/e.o/nineveh.htm

The Library at Nineveh

I, Assurbanipal, within [the palace], took care of the wisdom of Nebo. The whole of the inscribed tablets, of all the clay tablets, the whole of their mysteries and difficulties, I solved. (Cylinder A, Column I, Lines 31-33, in Smith, George. History of Assurbanipal, Translated from the Cuneiform Inscriptions. London: Harrison and Sons, 1871: pg.6)

Ashurbanipal, now in the British Museum

 http://looklex.com/e.o/ashurbanipal.htm

The first great ancient library in the western world would seem to be Ashurbanipal's royal library at Nineveh. Ashurbanipal was the last great king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (668 BCE – c. 627 BCE)..While archival material had been kept by previous rulers, the young king Ashurbanipal had a cultural and political purpose in rigorously gathering world knowledge into one place. Knowledge was power. He commandeered, bought, stole, and had copied as much Babylonian material as he could. While he paid select Babylonian scribes to collect and copy texts, he is said to have chained others to their places. He seems determined to secure material that was already fading in human memory.

His library is known to us because of one the great ironies of history: the burning of the city of Nineveh by the Medes baked and thus preserved thousands of cuneiform tablets. The majority of these are housed in the British Museum which continues to research them. Read about the Ashurbanipal Library Project here and listen to an informative podcast from the BBC here.

Scholars now think that with the size of its collection of tablets, leather and papyrus scrolls, and wax boards, Nineveh's library surpassed the subsequent rival, Alexandria. While divination texts dominated the collection, mythological texts, literature, history, government archives and religious works were gathered in the thousands over a twenty-five year period. The king would brooke no rival, at the end of a pen or the sword!

Tablet of Gilgamesh found at Nineveh now in the British Museum

http://looklex.com/e.o/gilgamesh.htm

We do not know what the library looked like, though a romantic (copy-written) image here evokes its splendour. However, we do know it was an organized collection with genres in separate rooms perhaps. And thanks to the library, we have preserved the fullest copies of the epic of Gilgamesh and a pre-biblical version of Noah's flood.

Is Nineveh a Learning Commons?

While this is not the criteria for judging Nineveh's importance, three things stand out for me as I try to contextualize and construct the concept of the modern library/learning commons. Ashurbanipal's royal library

• established the library as a force for civilization by preserving both current knowledge and knowledge that was threatened by forgetfulness and loss
• recognized that knowledge was power — power to rule wisely beyond a particular time
• applied organizational principles to systematize vast resources to use them effectively

It was not a modern library commons mainly because of the absence of democratic access. It served only an elite, specific culture. However, we would do well to judge its importance in terms of our global hopes, not of domination but collaboration. If King Ashurbanipal had had the Internet, he would have embraced it. Perhaps in a wave of universal wisdom, he would have unchained his scholar-slaves and traded in their clay tablets for IPads!

Note: Thanks to LookLex Encyclopedia for my educational use of the images about Nineveh.