Not all modern libraries are public. Many academic and law libraries are not public. So too there are internal libraries maintained by state organizations, mostly military, which are not public access. But there are all still "libraries".

Of course. I'm just saying that while cultures have been cobbling together collections of stuff since time immemorial -- doubtless there were archives much older than these -- the really interesting innovation didn't occur until the Renaissance. Yet this article doesn't even mention it.

That is one interesting innovation, but not the only interesting innovation: centralized repos of knowledge, scribes used to copy and thus distribute handwritten books, a dedicated focus to literacy(even by just a few privileged individuals)...those are all fascinating.

> Yet this article doesn't even mention it.

Yes because it's specifically about the older ones, and as you say your innovation is from... newer ones.

> These were not libraries in the modern sense so much as private archives

Not sure why you think 'library' implies public? It just means a collection of books. Many libraries today are private, owned by institutions, religious orders, private families, universities, etc. I'd guess the majority are private?

> These were not libraries in the modern sense so much as private archives, owned and controlled by religious orders or royalty and only available to a select few.

Isn't this exactly the modern definition of a library?

> A library is a curated collection of sources of information and similar resources, selected by experts and made accessible to a defined community for reference or borrowing, often in a quiet environment conducive to study. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library