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A bookcase, or bookshelf, is a piece of furniture, almost always with horizontal shelves, used to store books. Bookcases are used in private homes, public and university libraries, offices and bookstores. A bookcase may be fitted with glass doors.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Bookcase )〕 A bookcase consists of a unit including two or more shelves which may not all be used to contain books or other printed materials. Bookcases range from small, low models the height of a table to high models reaching up to ceiling height. Shelves may be fixed or adjustable to different positions in the case. In rooms entirely devoted to the storage of books they may be permanently fixed to the walls and/or floor. Bookcases may have doors that can be closed to protect the books from air pollution, and bookshelves are open-fronted. These doors are almost always glazed, so as to allow the spines of the books to be read. Especially valuable books may be kept in locked cases with wooden or glazed doors. A bookshelf normally stands on some other piece of furniture such as a desk or chest. Larger books are more likely to be kept in horizontal piles and very large books flat on wide shelves. In Latin and Greek the idea of bookcase is represented by ''Bibliotheca'' and ''Bibliothēkē'' (Greek: βιβλιοθήκη), derivatives of which mean ''library'' in many modern languages. A bookcase is also known as a ''bookshelf'', a ''bookstand'', a cupboard and a ''bookrack''.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Bookcase )〕 In a library, large bookshelves are called "stacks." ==History of the bookcase== Private libraries appeared during the late Roman republic: Seneca inveighed against libraries fitted out for show by illiterate owners who scarcely read their titles in the course of a lifetime, but displayed the scrolls in bookcases (''armaria'') of citrus wood inlaid with ivory that ran right to the ceiling: "by now, like bathrooms and hot water, a library is got up as standard equipment for a fine house (''domus'').〔Seneca, ''De tranquillitate animi'' ix.4–7.〕 Revolving bookcases, known as ''zhuanluntang'', have been documented in imperial China, and its invention is credited to Fu Xi in 544.〔 Descriptions of revolving bookcases have been found in 8th- and 9th-century Chinese texts. Revolving bookcases were popularized in Buddhist monasteries during the Song Dynasty under the reign of Emperor Taizu, who ordered the mass printing of the Buddhist Tripiṭaka scriptures.〔 An illustration of a revolving bookcase is depicted in Li Jie's architectural treatise the ''Yingzao Fashi''. When books were written by hand and were not produced in great quantities, they were kept in small boxes or chests which owners (usually the wealthy or clergy) carried with them. As manuscript volumes accumulated in religious houses or in homes of the wealthy, they were stored on shelves or in cupboards. These cupboards are the direct predecessors of today's bookcases. Later the doors were discarded, and the evolution of the bookcase proceeded. Even then, however, the volumes were not arranged in the modern fashion. They were either placed in piles upon their sides, or if upright, were ranged with their backs to the wall and their edges outwards. The band of leather, vellum or parchment which closed the book was often used for the inscription of the title, which was thus on the fore-edge instead of on the spine. Titles were also commonly written onto the fore-edge. It was not until the invention of printing had greatly reduced the cost of books, thus allowing many more people direct access to owning books, that it became the practice to write the title on the spine and shelve books with the spine outwards. Early bookcases were usually of oak, which is still deemed by some to be the most appropriate wood for an elegant library.〔 The oldest bookcases in England are those in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, which were placed in position in the last year or two of the sixteenth century; in that library are the earliest extant examples of shelved galleries over the flat wall-cases. Long ranges of book-shelves are somewhat severe in appearance, and many attempts have been made by means of carved cornices and pilasters to give them a less austere appearance. These attempts were most successful as in the hands of the English cabinetmakers of the second half of the eighteenth century.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bookcase」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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