This work examines the public archives and libraries of the Greek world from the late Archaic period to the beginning of Trajan's rule. This study, including a catalogue, focuses on the buildings that housed the archives and libraries, their organisation, and their place in the Greek cities and the Hellenistic kingdoms. It explores the development of these institutions, their topography in the city and issues of access and the purposes for which they were used by readers.The work is aimed both at classicists and at historians of libraries, books and archives, and covers a gap in our knowledge of institutions that were important despite a relative lack of visibility in the literature and the archaeological record, in an ancient civilization that is known for having given birth to one of the most celebrated institutions of knowledge and book preservation in the world: the Great Library of Alexandria.