The Library Of Babel - Television Tropes & Idioms

The Library of Alexandria sometimes gets this treatment in fiction. It held so much ancient knowledge that some say that if it had not burned down and been lost forever, technology would be significantly more advanced today.
- well if the work of hero of alexandria were there (you know the guy who invented the vapor engine), that is sure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_of_Alexandria

Close General

The Infinity Library of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, which has all the publications and data of every world, and has been described as containing the memories of the universe.
Mahou Sensei Negima has Library Island, a city-sized underground library so massive that Mahora actually has a school club dedicated to exploring it. Is known to contain books that make the holder more intelligent, golems, dragons, lakes, the roots of The World Tree, and lots of booby traps. See for yourself.
The Library of Spirits ("Fantasy Library") in the Read Or Dream manga has every book ever written, as reading material for the dead. However, it appears on Earth for 1 hour every 10 years, and the living may borrow one book for a 10 year period.
The Great Library in Yami To Boushi To Hon No Tabibito consists of books that contain every single world of the multiverse down to the smallest detail. And it also comes with a Hot Librarian (actually, there are even two of them) included.
- Lesbian Hot Librarian girls. Sisters. And a Nice Hat.
The Mac Guffin of Outlaw Star, the Galactic Leyline is revealed in the last episode to be a library left behind by the Precursors; so far advanced beyond mortal comprehension that it's described as a "Machine god". Mad Scientist Gwen Khan's entire motivation for seeking out the Leyline was to become one with the unlimited data compiled within it.

Close Anime and Manga

Fables contains a massive library so large that the foyer is large enough to be a seat of government and contain objects of mythical size (Excalibur has literally become as big as the legend of Arthur). Oddly even though it belongs to all sorts of magical creatures it's never implied to be magical in any way except for its extreme size.
The Library of Dream in The Sandman is full of those books that were conceived by their authors but never written or completed. This not only includes things like GK Chesterton's The Man Who Was October, or PG Wodehouse's Psmith and Jeeves, but an awful lot of books like That romantic comedy sci-fi thriller I used to think about on the bus to work.
- Word Of God has it that it has an annex that contains everything that actually was written, too. We just never see it because it's so tiny compared to the rest of the place.
In Gold Digger, the Library of Time in Shangri-La can magically summon up any book ever printed in all of history.
- Given that this is a Fred Perry title, the (male) librarian is every inch the Hot Librarian.

Close Comics

Not exactly stated to be one, but in the movie What Dreams May Come has a brifely seem library that if is not one, it surely invokes the same the feeling, is massive, and there is no actual floor, only water, but is okay because people just fly to get they books, also, it is a heaven, so it could easily be a exact example of this trope.
There are a few super-libraries in the Star Wars mythos: The Jedi library seen in the prequels; an enormous data collection belonging to a former smuggler; a whole planet is devoted to being a galactic library. All three of these are implied to be the sum of all knowledge in the galaxy (or damn near, at least)
- The longest spanning of these would likely be the Journal of the Whills, kept by multiple Keeper of the Whills, who were responsible for adding data to it as time went on.
The Librarian films are about a librarian of this type of library. Not only does it contain legendary and magical books, but also all the world's greatest and most dangerous treasures. Unlike most of these Noah Wyde makes for a very cute librarian.

Close Films

The library of Unseen University in Discworld leads to other dimensions thanks to the sheer weight of accumulated knowledge distorting the space-time continuum. This is known as L-Space. The library itself is pretty much a universe of its own with all the magical books, library creatures such as the thesaurus and lost tribes of research students inside.
- In fact all libraries lead to L-Space (and are therefore Libraries of Babel); the UU Library is just the largest "node" in the Portal Network.
- Death's Library is a variation - every person's life story writes itself into a book somewhere on his shelves. As you go back, the histories are written on scrolls, then animal skins, then stone slabs... One character asks Death's daughter (adopted) what came before the slabs, because some people would "quite like to know". She replies that she didn't get that far, as she was running out of candles.
  - Which leads to a humorous scene where the protagonists find someone's book and upon going to the last page, are tipped off that he is sneaking up behind them.
  - They then temporarily incapacitate the sneaker by dropping his own life story on top of his head. The shelves are... rather tall.
This is Older Than They Think—there is a short story by Kurd Lasswitz, The Universal Library, exploring this same idea and written in 1901, decades before Borges.
The Great Library in the Thursday Next books, which contains every book that will ever be written, and a few more besides.
The Library of Celaeno in August Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos novel The Trail of Cthulhu. It's on the 4th planet of the star Celaeno in the Pleiades, and is full of arcane information.
- That library made an appearance in the Tabletop RPG Call Of Cthulhu adventure The Fungi From Yuggoth.
- Another unusual library exists in the Dreamlands in the short story "Principles and Parameters," which very likely draws on some earlier story.
Classic HP Lovecraft example: the library of Miskatonic University in Arkham.
- Which is peanuts compared to the Archive of the Great Race of Yith hidden deep underground somewhere in the Australian Outback, which is supposed to contain the history and combined knowledge of every civilization that has ruled, or will ever rule planet Earth.
- In HP Lovecraft's writing, some real world libraries also hold tomes of Eldritch lore. The Necronomicon, one of the best known examples, can be found in the British Museum, the National Library of France, the Widener Library of Harvard University, and the University of Buenos Aires. Some of these (particularly the National Library of France) are so old and so large that they probably count as real life examples of the library of babel without the terrifying books which drive people mad.
A Shout Out to this. The library of the abbey in The Name Of The Rose; though it does not literally contain every possible book, it is described as containing within it all the knowledge of medieval Europe, and entrance to it is forbidden. Also, the blind monk Jorge de Burgos is an obvious Shout Out to Borges.
The novel Endymion Spring has The Last Book, which is basically a Library of Babel condensed into one volume. It's also known as the Book of Sand, another Shout Out to Borges' work.
The Dresden Files has a variation of this: all the written knowledge in the history of ever, updated live. The Archive (dubbed "Ivy" by Harry) is a walking Library of Babel in the form of a young girl. Everything and anything that is written, she knows. Harry takes advantage of this in Book 10: When Ivy is kidnapped, Harry, in the midst of figuring out what to do, grabs a piece of paper and writes a reassuring note, telling her that he's coming. Post-rescue, she mentions that she got it.
- Which means she knows every trash novel and crappy fanfic ever. Best not to think about that too much...
- Hi, Ivy! How's it going?
In The Neverending Story, Bastian creates a library with every story he has ever composed, for the benefit of a city of storytellers.
A Series Of Unfortunate Events features several non-supernatural libraries which come close to this, including a massive system of filing cabinets, a collection of banned books, and a pile of valuable secret documents under a table.
The Beast's library in Robin McKinley's Beauty. Might not have all the books that will ever be written, but it certainly has books that haven't been written as of when the story occurs.
The book The City of Dreaming Books by german author Walter Moers takes place in the city of Bookholm. On The surface, you can buy nearly every book in existence. But in the catacombes below, if you are able to survive long enough, you can find verything ever written. Somewhere.
In Magnus, the Library of Dragylon, Lucifer's fortress, is described thus: Lucifer walked slowly along the surface of the library's dark aisle of ethereal water that was connected to cosmic engines located at Dragylon's core. His jewel-encrusted wings fluttered behind him like the robes of a scholar while he glanced at the towering bookcases to the left and right of him. He strode through shafts of light descending down from the sphere's atmosphere through certain panels that were open on each side of the library's vaulted roof, eyes flashing brightly each time he passed through the pockets of thick shadows, the darkness consuming all but the muscled outline of his golden form like a solar eclipse. The library consisted of rolled scrolls of ivory parchment stuffed into open sleeves, with each sleeve stacked on top of one another on the shelves. Small flaming symbols of angelic and cherubic origin hovered in the space of each sleeve's open circle, serving as a coded filing system created by his scribe Medius. Lucifer's own voice whispered at him from behind the scrolls' fiery symbols as he walked past them, swirling around him in cosmic drafts of devilish diatribes and prideful proclamations.
As I recall there is one of these mentioned in the first novel of 'The Book Of The New Sun' by Gene Wolfe.
The Galactic Library on Trantor, from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, should count. At least until it's sacked. Add in the 'finished' copy of the Encyclopedia Galactica which is used to 'provide' the chapter quotes, as the Encyclopedia project is intended as a compendium of human knowledge so it won't be forgotten, too.
The Trope Namer, of course, although it's a lot less useful than most of these libraries, because it contains every possible book. So yes, the true story of your own death is in there, but so is every conceivable false story of your own death, with nothing to distinguish them. And most of the books are simply gibberish.

Close Literature

The Library, so big it doesn't even need a name, just a The, from Doctor Who in "Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead."
- The Library is the entire planet. In fact, the moon is a virus checker. The Library stored all the souls from all the people in The Library in The Library's computer core when Vashta Nerada began to kill everyone. It even gave them simulated lives.
  - On a related note, the Doctor Who Expanded Universe Big Finish audio "The One Doctor" features Mentos, a being created for a game show that remarkably resembles The Weakest Link. It can answer any question by going back in time and finding the answer, essentially acting as a Library Of Babel. It was only defeated by asking one question: What can't it answer?
The school library in Buffy The Vampire Slayer is an approximation of this, with all those arcane references back in the rear stacks.
- Not sure if this a example, or just a sort of plothole, also, once Giles was surprised when students actually went there to (normal) research.
Memory Alpha is the Library of Congress for the Federation in Star Trek. Since the Federation consists of multiple worlds, and new information is being brought in by Starships all the time, it's probably huge. Logically, there are Memories Beta through Omega to back it up in case the facility is lost.
- In one of Diane Duane's Star Trek novels, the Enterprise returns to Earth for a resupply, and while everyone else is on shore leave, Spock stays behind to update the ship's computers with information from all of Earth's major libraries. (He finds it relaxing.)
The collectors' library in Andromeda. Although it only appears once in the episode "Time out of Mind".
The protagonist of John Doe carried The Library Of Babel around in his head.
The Gaia Library in Kamen Rider Double is a neverending white void filled with bookshelves that only Philip can access. However, its function is more like a Search Engine of Babel as Philip needs keywords before he can get any of the information he needs.

Close Live Action TV

The Library of Yves in the Tabletop RPG In Nomine.
Warhammer 40000 has the Black Library, containing the collected knowledge of the entire Eldar race. It's hidden in the webway, and guarded by the greatest of the Solitaires.
The Library of Candlekeep in the Forgotten Realms has shades of this, most notably the 'arcane knowledge' part; you must donate a book to the library in order to gain access, and most of the people who wish to do so are mages who donate low-level spellbooks.
The dwindling race of Callidians, from the Talislanta game setting, are the keepers of a Library Of Babel of pre-Great Disaster documents.

Close Tabletop Games

In the The Elder Scrolls verse, the Plane of Oblivion occupied by the Deidra Prince Hermaeus Mora is like this - an entire plane of reality filled with books, and supposedly containing every bit of Forbidden Knowledge and every secret, ever, at all. One book you can read in the game tells the story of a master Conjurer who traveled the Planes of Oblivion to learn more about them - passing through one realm after the next. His travels ended in the Library of Forbidden Knowledge - since he had started his journey specifically to seek greater understanding, he was completely incapable of tearing himself away from the infinity supply of knowledge that universe offered. In the course of the game, you can actually obtain one book from this library - the Oghma Infinitum, which... well, let's just say that it's basically the most powerful, useful and hard-to-get artifact around.
- The legend and the Oghma continue in Oblivion. There's also the Imperial Library filled with The Elder Scrolls that contain all knowledge that was and ever will be...but seems less impressive after the description of Hermaeus Mora's.
World Of Warcraft: The Library section of the Karazhan instance has bookshelves as tall as staircases, as well as books strewn all along the floor which can be picked up and used to give you one of a few buffs, depending on the tome.
- In addition to that, there are at least two libraries which might fit this trope even though they are physically small because they are larger on the inside than the outside, and/or because they have no normal doors and can only be reached by teleportation.
Voile, the Magical Library. Maintained by Patchouli Knowledge, who spends her days locked up inside adding to the already-massive cache of knowledge. While 100 straight years of this this have given her anemia, asthma, and Vitamin A deficiency, you are more than likely to find anything you could ever want in there (Marisa sure does).
- Bonus points for Patchouli, since she's not just the librarian, but also the author of an unspecified proportion of the books in her library, and probably the overwhelming majority of the magic books in the library, given the esoteric rules for wizardry in the Touhou 'verse.
- It is also worth noting, just to get a sense of its dimensions, that in the stage you fight in the Voile Library, it is possible for you have a roughly five-minute-long aerial battle over the bookshelves travelling in one direction without ever reaching the end.
The Dark People from The Longest Journey seek to obtain every book ever written, which they store in their library, located on a moving island whose location is a secret for but a few.
The Library of the Ancients in Final Fantasy V has an unbelievable number a books, including a large number which decide to attack the party. Being killed by a book is not a good way to go.
- Daguererro in Final Fantasy IX is a Shout Out to this location, but its function is as a late-game optional town.

Close Video Games

The Bibliothiki in the webcomic Wapsi Square. It even has a semi-hot (the human parts of her are hot) librarian.

Close Web Comics

The Superhero School Whateley Academy library in the Whateley Universe isn't infinite, but it is enormous for a high school library, and contains lots of stuff human libraries shouldn't even know about, sealed off in private areas: alien books, Cosmic Horror books, ...
One of Sam Hughes stories was based on this, with the plot twist being that the library is Heaven. And the narrator isn't supposed to be there yet.
The Wiki World (a reference to The Other Wiki) of AH Dot Com The Series, which is an Alternate Universe Earth that has been wholly converted into a huge spherical space station dedicated to the preservation of all knowledge. So large that entire lost civilisations of "Edit Gangs" roam its abyssal reaches. Its rulers, the Wikimasters, govern it from an intimidating "Dark Cathedral". Subverted, however, when it turns out that in fact they're all just a bunch of pathetic anime nerds.
The online story Dominion And Duchy has one in the Galactic Library. It is run by an A.I. known as the Librarian and apparently holds the contents of the Great Library of Alexandria. The Librarian was apparently organizing it for the humans when they make first contact.

Close Web Original

"The Library" in the desert in Avatar The Last Airbender whose supernatural librarian, Wan Shi Tong, keeps humans outside because they only use knowledge for evil purposes.
- The protagonists, after promising Wan Shi Tong that they were not going in the library with malicious intent, go up to the observatory and find the next eclispe - but only because they're planning to launch an attack. Long story short, Wan Shi Tong overhears them and gets very, very mad.
- To clarify, he first does this when Zhao discovers information that allowed him to plan his own attack, except this was meant to be the genocide of the North Pole's Waterbenders, then the Gaang is using the information to plan to invade the Fire Nation and defeat the Fire Lord.
Futurama: in "The Why of Fry" the Brain Spawn are constructing a database of all the knowledge in the universe, and once it's full, they plan to destroy the universe to make sure no new knowledge appears. In Fry's own words, "Now it's personal."
- Spoofed in "Mars University". All the literature in the world is in the Mars U library — on two disks. (Fiction and Nonfiction)

Close Western Animation

The Internet itself could probably be the closest thing to a Real Life example. I mean, even the part about most of it being nonsense or forbidden knowledge (there are networks and web databases that can't be accessed normally) is there.
- Within that even, The Other Wiki. Except what isn't "notable".
- David Langford thinks so: he wrote an homage to Borges called "The Net of Babel".
- Sites like Amazon and Google Books allow users to look inside select pages of millions upon millions of books, which could be thought of as a sort of immense library.
Most national libraries have thousands if not millions of texts, and some countries with longer histories often have copies of the very earliest texts in their archives. For example the National Library of China has turtle shell and bone writing dating back past 1000 BC.
The Library of Congress holds every book published in the US, and every edition of said book. One must wonder how they hold all that without constantly expanding.
- It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
  - Oddly enough, it IS bigger on the inside than on the outside. Not only do you have the three LOC buildings, but the vast underground catacombs beneath them (which can take you through to the Capitol itself and eventually to the various Congressional office buildings). I haven't noticed much storage down beneath the LOC, but then again, there are so many rooms that it'd make a lot of sense for some of them to be devoted to that.
The British Library does the same for anything published in the UK and Republic of Ireland, including journals, newspapers, and foreign published books distributed in the UK. It contains texts going back to 300 BC which certainly qualifies it on the arcane level.
The Royal Library in Stockholm does the same for Sweden. It resides in nice looking building in a park, plus a huge man-made cavern below. That cavern is bombproof (but not nukeproof) and contains several climate-controlled buildings for storage. (It is right out of an Indiana Jones-movie.) No, this is not a public library, but a research facility (see below).
- There was something of a scandal some time ago, when it came clear that the illegal material which the place also stores either as potential future evidence, or just for the sake of storage was actually available to members of the public who filled the appropriate forms. This included child pornography.
The French National Library has already almost 30 millions of documents (books, photographs, movies, even programs): its objective can be summarized that way: any book, drawing, piece of music, film, etc., ever written published, read or saw in France is supposed to end up in the library, from the philosophical essays to the articles written in blogs. If the great hadron collider does not create a black hole, this library will.
- 5212 documents have been made available on their website this month. This is the 9th.
- And just to drive this home: These huge buildings◊ are just from the Bibliothèque François Mitterand branch.
Israel does it too. That Other Wiki: "By law, two copies of all printed matter published in Israel must be deposited in the Jewish National and University Library at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2001, the law was amended to include audio and video recordings, and other non-print media."
Practically every country apart from the poorest Third World nations has something like this to store everything published within its borders, just in case it might be relevant, some day.
The Vatican Library is a particularly good example, being a closed-stack library, with texts related to the Catholic church going back over a thousand years. In reality, it's mostly filled with rare, valuable, and fragile religious texts, but there are some fictional examples of it being used to store secret and/or poorly known documents. There's also the urban legend that it contains the world's largest collection of pornography, which has about as much truth to it as the idea that it contains the Necronomicon (read: none at all).
- Or maybe that's just what they want you to think...
  - About the Necronomicon bit. Not the pornography.
Some closed-stacks libraries resemble this simply because so few people have access to them. Low ceilings, lights designed to prevent damaging the materials, and air-conditioning set to keep the collections dry (i.e. frigid) contribute to the effect.
- What's the point of calling it a library if the public doesn't have access to it?
  - The word "library" is derived from the Latin librarius, of books. Who has access has nothing to do with it.
  - Hence the term "public library", to differentiate from other kinds of libraries.
  - "Closed stacks" just means that the average person off the street can't browse the books. You'd need to have a librarian or other staff member go fetch the materials for you. Even some public libraries operate this way. (e.g. NYPL)
Your average university library can appear this way to people who are only used to their school libraries. For example, the Barr Smith Library(University of Adelaide) has about 3 stories, an immense quiet study hall, and some Dewey categories are split over two floors. To date, this troper has not found the fiction section yet.
- The library at the medium sized college where This Troper is a student doesn't look all that big until you go inside. Then you realize that it is a behemoth. The library from my high school could fit comfortably in a little corner of the first floor, and it's several stories high. In fact, I'm not certain, but I think that there might be a model school library somewhere inside of it to help train future teachers/librarians. When you add in the fact that there are two other colleges in the region with similar libraries that can send books to ours on a days notice, this probably puts the number of books we have access to well into the hundreds of thousands.

Close Real Life

Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys

Examples