The monastic librarian, as we should call him, was known as the _armarius_, since he had charge of the _armaria_ or book-presses. He frequently united this office to that of precentor or leader of the choir, for at first the service-books were his chief care. It was his business to make the catalogue, to examine the volumes from time to time to see that mould or book-worms or other dangers were not threatening them, to give out books for transcription, and to distribute the various writing-materials used in the scriptorium or writing-room. He had also to collate such works as were bound to follow one text, such as Bibles, missals, monastic rules, etc. To these duties he often added that of secretary to the abbot and to the monastery generally. Many catalogues of monastic libraries are extant, and several belonging to continental foundations were compiled at a very early period. Of the library of St Gall, founded by the Abbé Gozbert in 816, a contemporary catalogue still exists. The St Gall library contained four hundred volumes, a large number for those days, and, moreover, was provided with a special room, a chamber over the scriptorium. It is not easy to see why in this and other cases of the co-existence of a library and a scriptorium one room was not made to do duty for both. But to return to the catalogues. Another early example is that of the Abbey of Clugni, in France, made in 831, and forming part of an inventory of the Abbey property. The Benedictine Abbey of Reichenau, on the Rhine, had four catalogues compiled in the ninth century--two of the books in the library, one of certain transcriptions made and added thereto, and one of additions to the library from other sources. Among English monastic book-lists, there is one of Whitby Abbey, which appears to have been made in 1180, and the library of Glastonbury Abbey, which excited the wonder and admiration of Leland, and which was started by St Dunstan round a nucleus of a few books formerly brought to the Abbey by Irish missionaries, was catalogued in 1247 or 1248. Catalogues of the books at Canterbury (Christ Church and St Augustine's monastery), Peterborough, Durham, Leicester, Ramsey, and other foundations are also known, and these, with the notices of Leland, form our only sources of information as to these various literary storehouses.