There's an episode of one of those James Burke shows, Connections or maybe The Day the Universe Changed: A Personal View where he is in a library, and there are all these leather bound books chained down to a table.

The library itself? Older than the Gutenberg printing press. Each book? Transcribed by hand. Hence the chains: you wouldn't want any of the free readers wandering away with the books after all. Share the wealth of their knowledge, not the material objects.

I still love libraries, yet the primordial libraries were apparently radical in ways the post-its libraries can't compete. 😉