In approaching the actual study of primitive libraries it is necessary to touch a little on definition and method. Both these matters, essential to the approach of any topic scientifically, doubly need some attention at this point, because library history has heretofore not troubled itself much about primitive libraries at all or indeed about libraries for the first two thousand years after they had left their more primitive stages. The very method, therefore, lies chiefly outside the experience of library history, being gathered mainly from primitive art and anthropology, and definition must needs consider what the essential nature of these primitive libraries is that links them with the great libraries of modern times. Discussion of definition is the more necessary in that the already contradictory usage has been still farther confused in the matter of the earlier historical libraries by those who, wishing to distinguish the collection of purely business records, public or private, from the collection of purely literary works by calling the former an archive, have yet applied the term archive, incorrectly, under their own definition, to mixed collections of business and other records. Many answers have been given to this question: What is a library? All of these imply a book or books, a place of keeping and somebody to do the keeping—books, building and librarian—but some definitions emphasize the books, some the place and some the keeping. Far the commonest words used have been the Greek _bibliotheke_ and the Latin _libraria_ and their derivatives. The one rather emphasizes the place and the other the books but both were used sometimes for both library and bookshop. When modern languages succeeded to the Latin the Romance languages kept _bibliotheca_ for library and _libraria_ for bookshop. Germanic languages on the other hand kept both words for library, although in the course of time German has nearly dropped librerei for bibliothek, and English has quite deserted bibliotheke for library. Both English and German call “book shop”, or “book business”, what French, Italian and Spanish call “library”. Library is thus the common modern word in English for a certain something which the German calls Bibliothek, the Frenchman bibliothèque and the Italian, Spaniard, Scandinavian and Slav call by some similar name. This something in its last analysis is a book or books kept for use rather than kept for sale or for the paper mill. A library is thus a book or books kept for use.