Information institutions started about 5000 to 8000 years ago when, at different places around the world, priests emerged as specialized preservers and producers of information. Collectively, they were also the primary information storage media of their societies. Because reliance on individual and group memory to transmit information across time and space was inefficient, recording methods emerged. Writers had to be trained, and schools emerged. Writing, in turn, led to the establishment of formal information-storage institutions. Under the Assyrian King Assurbanipal (668 to 627 B.C.), the royal library in Nineveh stocked over 10,000 works. Documents were arranged by subject such as law, medicine, history, astronomy, biography, religion, commerce, legends and hymns, each in a separate room in a compound. Wise men congregated there to use the information and to add to it. No doubt they also argued among themselves and were surrounded by disciples. Thus, knowledge and inquiry were already being organized along lines strikingly similar to today"s university departments. Adapted from Eli M. Noam, "Electronics and the Dim Future of the University. ©2016 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.