Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!

If you are:

• a long-time reader, lurker, or inquirer who has always felt too nervous to contribute an answer
• new to /r/AskHistorians and getting a feel for the community
• Looking for feedback on how well you answer
• polishing up a flair application
• one of our amazing flairs

this thread is for you ALL!

Come share the cool stuff you love about the past!

We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. Brief and short answers are allowed but MUST be properly sourced to respectable literature. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.

For this round, let’s look at: Museums & Libraries! Let's look into museums and libraries. How did people in the period you study preserve artifacts of the past, or the written word? Did they have some alternate institutions serving a similar purpose? Or an oral tradition that could be thought as a library itself? Come share stories from the past, or of today if you have some interesting anecdote from a museum or library of your preference!