It is 100 years since the Dunedin Public Library opened, but it has been more than 2000 since the value of such institutions was recognised.
The inscription above the door in the ancient Grecian city of Thebes read "Libraries: The medicine chest of the soul".
It is no accident that Ancient Greece is still considered one of the great civilisations, not least for its contributions to philosophy, civics, science, poetry, literature, drama and so forth, and, as with much else, they were right about libraries.
But a free, public library did not arrive in this city without teething pains, and not until 60 to 70 years of European settlement had passed.
Its founding and subsequent story has now been recounted in Mary Ronnie's excellent book Freedom to Read: A Centennial History of Dunedin Public Libary.
The idea of a free library in Dunedin was raised in the 1860s, but the first real attempts to establish it came in the 1880s and continued well into the next decade.
Mark Cohen, who became editor of the Evening Star in 1893, Sir Robert Stout and Dr D.
M Stuart were among those who lobbied the Dunedin City Council, arguing the case for a free library.
However, despite the efforts in particular of Mr Cohen and his Free Public Library Association, progress was slow, and interest, begrudging on the part of councils and the establishment of the day, came with the caveat that public money should not be spent on it ahead of infrastructure works.
Economically, times were not auspicious and it was not thought to be the time to launch into such non-essential services, unless as this newspaper put it at the time, "the task were to be accomplished by some extraordinary act of private munificence".
The Dunedin Mayor, M. J. Carroll, chimed in at a public meeting held to gauge public interest that while the council was not opposed to anything that was for the benefit of the city it "had to take up what were the most pressing wants".
In the event, through the championing of the project by a prominent free library advocate and unsuccessful mayoral candidate, C. R Chapman, the great American-Scottish philanthropist Andrew Carnegie was approached in 1901 for seeding funds.
In 1902, Mr Chapman's persistence was rewarded with a letter from Skibo Castle in Scotland, to which Mr Carnegie had retired, saying that, with certain conditions, £10,000 would be forthcoming.
The Dunedin Public Library was finally opened in 1908 and since then has been the intellectual and cultural cornerstone of the city.
As Mayor Mr J, McDonald said at the time: "It will be a storehouse and armoury of learning and knowledge for the whole of the city - the place for youth and adult, student and tutor, statesman, councillor and artisan to attend . . ."
And while there are concerns in an age of computers and YouTube and Facebook and cellphones over the general public appetite for books, there is every indication that libraries, and the Dunedin library in particular, will continue to be an essential part of social and cultural infrastructure.
For libraries, as with much else, have not stood still in the age of the Internet, as a glance at the Dunedin library's website will reveal.
There, for instance, is found library news and events, book reviews, information on publications, and of course, catalogue and search facilities.
The library even has a presence on YouTube.
Pessimism over the future of libraries has proved unfounded, and predictions of their demise greatly exaggerated.
It is possible to mount the argument that with so much unsorted, unfiltered, uncatalogued and unauthenticated information available to the public at the click of a computer mouse, libraries have never been more necessary.
There is also something reassuring about the physical presence of a library, not only as a meeting place for readers, scholars or the merely inquisitive, but also as a symbol of permanence in an all-too ephemeral and rapidly evolving online world.
The city owes a great debt of gratitude to those who pushed for the library to be built, who have maintained its standards, showed wisdom in moving with the times, and whose efforts continue to contribute to creating the aura of learning and education which has become an essential and prominent part of Dunedin's heritage, indeed, of its soul.
