Occasionally, a library patron will try to check out a reference book. "Can't you make an exception for me?" "No," I say with a smile. At the Chained Library of Zutphen, the Netherlands, Sixteenth Century librarians found a way to get the point across. The library was open to everyone. To make sure that the books didn't walk off, the monks chained all of the books to the reading desks.
There are footprints in the bricks on the floor. Perhaps they're from an animal, but since at least the Nineteenth Century, monks attributed them to the Devil.
(Photos: Julie Somers)
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This used to be common practice from the 14th/15th centuries through the 18th.
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Footprints that look exactly like dog paws? Must be the devil!
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That collection contains quite a few books before Gutenberg, so the replacement value would have been tremendous even when they were fairly new.
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