Before the printing press, books were incredibly scare and precious. No technique of mass production being available, each book had be carefully copied by hand that took thousands of skilled man-hours in transcribing texts, handcrafting ornate covers, and illuminating colorful pages. Thus, in publicly accessible libraries, books were often shelved with chains for safeguarding the library's valuable collection from potential thieves while allowing the public to read simultaneously. The chains were fitted to the corner or cover of the books through ringlets, and were long enough to allow the books to be taken from their shelves and read. The books were typically shelved with their fore-edges facing the reader, rather than their spines. It was a wrong way of shelving as it made finding the right book more challenging. But it did allow the books to be lifted and opened without needing to be turned around. But with the introduction of the printing press, when duplicates became more readily available and significantly affordable, the practice of chaining books to shelve died out.

In England, the Francis Trigge Chained Library, established in Grantham in 1598, is claimed to be the first English public library in Wimborne Minister is the second largest chained library founded in 1686 with the donation from Rev. William Stone. Worldwide, only a few chained libraries have survived with their original furniture, chains and books. This includes the library built in the Church of Siant Walpurga in 1564, located in the small town of Zutphen in the Netherlands. The library is now the part of a museum that allows visitors to tour and view the library's original books, furniture and chains. Another chained library, the Biblioteca Malatestiana library in Cesena, Italy, founded in 1454 is significant for being first civil library in Europe open to the general public. In Ireland, Marsh's Library in Dublin, built in 1701, is a non- institutional library, which is still housed in its original building. Interestingly, here it was not the books that were chained, but rather the readers were locked into cages to prevent rare volumes from 'wandering'. The oldest chain book written in the eighth century, found in the Mappa Mundiand Chained Library Museum located in Hereford, England, is the Hereford Gospels. However, the largest surviving example of a chained library is Hereford Cathedral Library in UK established in 1611 is now open to the public as a tourist attraction of museum with its chains and books intact.