Oldest continuously operating library

The oldest library that is still in operation is the library of St Catherine's Monastery, located in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula at the foot of Mount Sinai (Jebel Musa). The library was established at the time of the construction of the monastery, between 527 and 565 CE, on the orders of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. Its roots may stretch back even further, however, as there was an informal Christian religious community on the site as far back as the late Roman period. The pilgrim Egeria, writing in 383 CE, mentions that this community had a store of written scripture.

The library is home to one of the most important collections of early Christian manuscripts anywhere in the world; the 3,300 items known as the "Old Collection". The Old Collection is of particular interest to scholars as it includes a large number of palimpsests – books with reused pages that still contain traces of earlier, often lost, works. For the last ten years an international team of imaging scientists have operated an lab on-site in the monastery complex where they scan and preserve these ancient books.