   #copyright

Library

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Education; Recreation

   A modern-style library in Chambéry
   Enlarge
   A modern-style library in Chambéry

   A library is a collection of information resources and services,
   organized for use, and maintained by a political body, institution, or
   private individual. In the more traditional sense, it meant a
   collection of books. This collection and services are used by people
   who choose not to — or cannot afford to — purchase an extensive
   collection themselves, who need material no individual can reasonably
   be expected to have, or who require professional assistance with their
   research.

   However, with the collection of media other than books for storing
   information, many libraries are now also repositories and access points
   for maps, prints or other documents and artworks on various storage
   media such as microfilm, microfiche, audio tapes, CDs, LPs, cassettes,
   video tapes and DVDs, and provide public facilities to access CD-ROM
   and subscription databases and the Internet. Thus, modern libraries are
   increasingly being redefined as places to get unrestricted access to
   information in many formats and from many sources. In addition to
   providing materials, they also provide the services of specialists who
   are experts in matters related to finding and organizing information
   and interpreting information needs, called librarians.

   More recently, libraries are understood as extending beyond the
   physical walls of a building, by including material accessible by
   electronic means, and by providing the assistance of librarians in
   navigating and analyzing tremendous amounts of knowledge with a variety
   of digital tools.

   The term 'library' has itself acquired a secondary meaning: "a
   collection of useful material for common use", and in this sense is
   used in fields such as computer science, mathematics and statistics,
   electronics and biology.

History

   The first libraries were only partly libraries, being composed for the
   most part of the unpublished records, which are usually viewed as
   archives, not libraries. Archaeological findings from the diggings of
   the ancient city-states of Sumer have revealed temple rooms full of
   clay tablets in cuneiform script. These archives were made up nearly
   completely of the records of commercial transactions or inventories,
   with only a few documents touching theological matters, historical
   records or legends. Things were much the same in the government and
   temple records on papyrus of Ancient Egypt.

   The earliest discovered private archives were kept at Ugarit; besides
   correspondence and inventories, texts of myths may have been
   standardized practice-texts for teaching new scribes. Private or
   personal libraries made up of non-fiction and fiction books, (as
   opposed to the state or institutional records kept in archives) first
   appeared in classical Greece. The first ones appeared some time near
   the 5th century BC. The celebrated book collectors of Hellenistic
   Antiquity were listed in the late second century in Deipnosophistae:

     " Polycrates of Samos and Pisistratus who was tyrant of Athens, and
     Euclides who was himself also an Athenian and Nicorrates of Samos
     and even the kings of Pergamos, and Euripides the poet and Aristotle
     the philosopher, and Nelius his librarian; from whom they say our
     countryman Ptolemæus, surnamed Philadelphus, bought them all, and
     transported them, with all those which he had collected at Athens
     and at Rhodes to his own beautiful Alexandria."

   All these libraries were Greek; the cultivated Hellenized diners in
   Deipnosophistae pass over the libraries of Rome in silence. At the
   Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, apparently the villa of Caesar's
   father-in-law, the Greek library has been partly preserved in volcanic
   ash; archaeologists speculate that a Latin library, kept separate from
   the Greek one, may await discovery at the site.

   Libraries were filled with parchment scrolls as at Pergamum and on
   papyrus scrolls as at Alexandria: export of prepared writing materials
   was a staple of commerce. There were a few institutional or royal
   libraries like the Library of Alexandria which were open to an educated
   public, but on the whole collections were private. In those rare cases
   where it was possible for a scholar to consult library books there
   seems to have been no direct access to the stacks. In all recorded
   cases the books were kept in a relatively small room where the staff
   went to get them for the readers, who had to consult them in an
   adjoining hall or covered walkway.

   Little is known about early Chinese libraries, save what is written
   about the imperial library which began with the Qin Dynasty. One of the
   curators of the imperial library in the Han Dynasty is believed to have
   been the first to establish a library classification system and the
   first book notation system. At this time the library catalog was
   written on scrolls of fine silk and stored in silk bags.
   The Geisel Library at UCSD, with its unique architecture, is a San
   Diego landmark.
   Enlarge
   The Geisel Library at UCSD, with its unique architecture, is a San
   Diego landmark.

   In Persia many libraries were established by the Zoroastrian elite and
   the Persian Kings. Among the first ones was a royal library in Isfahan.
   One of the most important public libraries established around 666 AD in
   south-western Iran was the Library of Gundishapur. It was a part of a
   bigger scientific complex located at the Academy of Gundishapur.

   In the West, the first public libraries were established under the
   Roman Empire as each succeeding emperor strove to open one or many
   which outshone that of his predecessor. Unlike the Greek libraries,
   readers had direct access to the scrolls, which were kept on shelves
   built into the walls of a large room. Reading or copying was normally
   done in the room itself. The surviving records give only a few
   instances of lending features. As a rule Roman public libraries were
   bilingual: they had a Latin room and a Greek room. Most of the large
   Roman baths were also cultural centers, built from the start with a
   library, with the usual two room arrangement for Greek and Latin texts.

   In the sixth century, at the very close of the Classical period, the
   great libraries of the Mediterranean world remained those of
   Constantinople and Alexandria. Cassiodorus, minister to Theodoric,
   established a monastery at Vivarium in the heel of Italy with a library
   where he attempted to bring Greek learning to Latin readers and
   preserve texts both sacred and secular for future generations. As its
   unofficial librarian, Cassiodorus not only collected as many
   manuscripts as he could, he also wrote treatises aimed at instructing
   his monks in the proper uses of reading and methods for copying texts
   accurately. In the end, however, the library at Vivarium was dispersed
   and lost within a century.

   Elsewhere in the Early Middle Ages, after the fall of the Western Roman
   Empire and before the rise of the large Western Christian monastery
   libraries beginning at Montecassino, libraries were found in scattered
   places in the Christian Middle East. Upon the rise of Islam, libraries
   in newly Islamic lands knew a brief period of expansion in the Middle
   East, North Africa, Sicily and Spain. Like the Christian libraries,
   they mostly contained books which were made of paper, and took a codex
   or modern form instead of scrolls; they could be found in mosques,
   private homes, and universities. Some mosques sponsored public
   libraries. Ibn al-Nadim's bibliography Fihrist demonstrates the
   devotion of medieval Muslim scholars to books and reliable sources; it
   contains a description of thousands of books circulating in the Islamic
   world circa 1000, including an entire section for books about the
   doctrines of other religions. Unfortunately, modern Islamic libraries
   for the most part do not hold these antique books; many were lost,
   destroyed by Mongols or Spanish Inquistors, or removed to European
   libraries and museums during the colonial period.

   By the 8th century first Iranians and then Arabs had imported the craft
   of paper making from China, with a mill already at work in Baghdad in
   794. By the 9th century completely public libraries started to appear
   in many Islamic cities. They were called "halls of Science" or dar
   al-'ilm. They were each endowed by Islamic sects with the purpose of
   representing their tenets as well as promoting the dissemination of
   secular knowledge. The libraries often employed translators and
   copyists in large numbers, in order to render into Arabic the bulk of
   the available Persian, Greek and Roman non-fiction and the classics of
   literature. This flowering of Islamic learning ceased after a few
   centuries as the Islamic world began to turn against experimentation
   and learning. After a few centuries many of these libraries were
   destroyed by Mongolian invasion. Others were victim of wars and
   religious strife in the Islamic world. However, a few examples of these
   medieval libraries, such as the libraries of Chinguetti in West Africa,
   remain intact and relatively unchanged even today. Another ancient
   library from this period which is still operational and expanding is
   the Central Library of Astan Quds Razavi in the Iranian city of
   Mashhad, which has been operating for more than six centuries.

   The contents of these Islamic libraries were copied by Christian monks
   in Muslim/Christian border areas, particularly Spain and Sicily. From
   there they eventually made their way into other parts of Christian
   Europe. These copies joined works that had been preserved directly by
   Christian monks from Greek and Roman originals, as well as copies
   Western Christian monks made of Byzantine works. The resulting
   conglomerate libraries are the basis of every modern library today.

   Medieval library design reflected the fact that these
   manuscripts--created via the labor-intensive process of hand
   copying--were valuable possessions. Library architecture developed in
   response to the need for security. Librarians often chained books to
   lecterns, armaria, or shelves, in well-lit rooms. Despite this
   protectiveness, many libraries were willing to lend their books if
   provided with security deposits (usually money or a book of equal
   value). Monastic libraries lent and borrowed books from each other
   frequently and lending policy was often theologically grounded. For
   example, the Franciscan monasteries loaned books to each other without
   a security deposit since according to their vow of poverty only the
   entire order could own property. In 1212 the council of Paris condemned
   those monasteries that still forbad loaning books, reminding them that
   lending is "one of the chief works of mercy."

   The earliest example in England of a library to be endowed for the
   benefit of users who were not members of an institution such as a
   cathedral or college was the Francis Trigge Chained Library in
   Grantham, Lincolnshire, established in 1598. The library still exists
   and can justifiably claim to be the forerunner of later public library
   systems.

   The early libraries located in monastic cloisters and associated with
   scriptoria were collections of lecterns with books chained to them.
   Shelves built above and between back-to-back lecterns were the
   beginning of bookpresses. The chain was attached at the fore-edge of a
   book rather than to its spine. Book presses came to be arranged in
   carrels (perpendicular to the walls and therefore to the windows) in
   order to maximize lighting, with low bookcases in front of the windows.
   This stall system (fixed bookcases perpendicular to exterior walls
   pierced by closely spaced windows) was characteristic of English
   institutional libraries. In Continental libraries, bookcases were
   arranged parallel to and against the walls. This wall system was first
   introduced on a large scale in Spain's El Escorial.

   As books became more common, the need for chaining them lessened. But
   as the number of books in libraries increased, so did the need for
   compact storage and access with adequate lighting, giving birth to the
   stack system, which involved keeping a library's collection of books in
   a space separate from the reading room, an arrangement which arose in
   the 19th century. Book stacks quickly evolved into a fairly standard
   form in which the cast iron and steel frameworks supporting the
   bookshelves also supported the floors, which often were built of
   translucent blocks to permit the passage of light (but were not
   transparent, for reasons of modesty). With the introduction of
   electrical lighting, the use of glass floors was largely discontinued,
   though floors were still often composed of metal grating to allow air
   to circulate in multi-story stacks.

   Ultimately, even more space was needed, and a method of moving shelves
   on tracks (compact shelving) was introduced to cut down on otherwise
   wasted aisle space.
   The British Museum Reading Room, London. This building used to be the
   main reading room of the British Library; now it is itself a museum
   exhibit. Enlarge
   The British Museum Reading Room, London. This building used to be the
   main reading room of the British Library; now it is itself a museum
   exhibit.

Types of libraries

   Libraries can be divided into categories by several methods:
     * by the entity (institution, municipality, or corporate body) that
       supports or perpetuates them
          + Tribal libraries
          + school libraries
          + private libraries
          + corporate libraries
          + government libraries
          + academic libraries
          + historical society libraries
     * by the type of documents or materials they hold
          + digital libraries
          + data libraries
          + picture (photograph) libraries
          + slide libraries
          + tool libraries
     * by the subject matter of documents they hold
          + architecture libraries
          + fine arts libraries
          + law libraries
          + medical libraries
          + military libraries
          + theological libraries
     * by the users they serve
          + military communities
     * by traditional professional divisions:
          + Academic library — These libraries are located on the campuses
            of colleges and universities and serve primarily the students
            and faculty of that and other academic institutions. Some
            academic libraries, especially those at public institutions,
            are accessible to of the general public in whole or in part.
          + School libraries — Most public and private primary and
            secondary schools have libraries designed to support the
            school's curriculum.
          + Research libraries — These libraries are intended for
            supporting scholarly research, and therefore maintain
            permanent collections and attempt to provide access to all
            necessary material. Research libraries are most often academic
            libraries or national libraries, but many large special
            libraries have research libraries within their special field
            and a very few of the largest public libraries also serve as
            research libraries.
          + Public libraries or public lending libraries — These libraries
            provide service to the general public and make at least some
            of their books available for borrowing, so that readers may
            use them at home over a period of days or weeks. Typically,
            libraries issue library cards to community members wishing to
            borrow books. Many public libraries also serve as community
            organizations that provide free services and events to the
            public, such as babysitting classes and story time.
          + Special libraries — All other libraries fall into this
            category. Many private businesses and public organizations,
            including hospitals, museums, research laboratories, law
            firms, and many government departments and agencies, maintain
            their own libraries for the use of their employees in doing
            specialized research related to their work. Special libraries
            may or may not be accessible to some identified part of the
            general public. Branches of a large academic or research
            libraries dealing with particular subjects are also usually
            called "special libraries": they are generally associated with
            one or more academic departments. Special libraries are
            distinguished from special collections, which are branches or
            parts of a library intended for rare books, manuscripts, and
            similar material.
     * The final method of dividing library types is also the simplest.
       Many institutions make a distinction between circulating libraries
       (where materials are expected and intended to be loaned to patrons,
       institutions, or other libraries) and collecting libraries (where
       the materials are selected on a basis of their natures or subject
       matter). Many modern libraries are a mixture of both, as they
       contain a general collection for circulation, and a reference
       collection which is often more specialized, as well as restricted
       to the library premises.

   Also, the governments of most major countries support national
   libraries. Three noteworthy examples are the U.S. Library of Congress
   Canada Library and Archives Canada and the British Library. A typically
   broad sample of libraries in one state in the U.S. can be explored at
   Every Library In Illinois.

Description

   Libraries almost invariably contain long aisles with rows and rows of
   books.
   Enlarge
   Libraries almost invariably contain long aisles with rows and rows of
   books.

   Libraries have materials arranged in a specified order according to a
   library classification system, so that items may be located quickly and
   collections may be browsed efficiently. Some libraries have additional
   galleries beyond the public ones, where reference materials are stored.
   These reference stacks may be open to selected members of the public.
   Others require patrons to submit a "stack request," which is a request
   for an assistant to retrieve the material from the closed stacks.

   Larger libraries are often broken down into departments staffed by both
   paraprofessionals and professional librarians.
     * Circulation handles user accounts and the loaning/returning and
       shelving of materials.
     * Technical Services works behind the scenes cataloging and
       processing new materials and deaccessioning weeded materials.
     * Reference staffs a reference desk answering user questions (using
       structured reference interviews), instructing users, and developing
       library programming. Reference may be further broken down by user
       groups or materials such as Youth, Teen, Genealogy or Special
       Collections.
     * Collection Development orders materials and maintains materials
       budgets.

Library use

   Many potential library patrons nevertheless do not know how to use a
   library effectively. This can be due to lack of early exposure,
   shyness, or anxiety and fear of displaying ignorance. These problems
   drove the emergence of the library instruction movement, which
   advocates library user education. Library instruction has been
   practiced in the U.S. since the 19th century. One of the early leaders
   was John Cotton Dana. The basic form of library instruction is
   generally known as information literacy.

   Libraries inform the public of what materials are available in their
   collections and how to access that information. Before the computer
   age, this was accomplished by the card catalog — a cabinet containing
   many drawers filled with index cards that identified books and other
   materials. In a large library, the card catalog often filled a large
   room. The emergence of the Internet, however, has led to the adoption
   of electronic catalog databases (often referred to as "webcats" or as
   OPACs, for "online public access catalog"), which allow users to search
   the library's holdings from any location with Internet access. This
   style of catalog maintenance is compatible with new types of libraries,
   such as digital libraries and distributed libraries, as well as older
   libraries that have been retrofitted. Electronic catalog databases are
   disfavored by some who believe that the old card catalog system was
   both easier to navigate and allowed retention of information, by
   writing directly on the cards, that is lost in the electronic systems.
   This argument is analogous to the debate over paper books and e-books.
   While they have been accused of precipitously throwing out valuable
   information in card catalogs, most modern libraries have nonetheless
   made the movement to electronic catalog databases.

   Finland has the highest number of registered book borrowers per capita
   in the world. Over half of Finland´s population are registered
   borrowers.

Library management

   Basic tasks in library management include the planning of acquisitions
   (which materials the library should acquire, by purchase or otherwise),
   library classification of acquired materials, preservation of materials
   (especially rare and fragile archival materials such as manuscripts),
   the deaccessioning of materials, patron borrowing of materials, and
   developing and administering library computer systems. More long-term
   issues include the planning of the construction of new libraries or
   extensions to existing ones, and the development and implementation of
   outreach services and reading-enhancement services (such as adult
   literacy and children's programming).

Funding problems

   In the United States, among other countries, libraries in
   financially-strapped communities are in the precarious position of
   having to compete with other public institutions such as police,
   firefighters, schools, and health care.

   Many communities are closing down or reducing the capability of their
   library systems, at the same time balancing their budgets. In December
   2004, Salinas, California almost became the first city in the United
   States to completely close down its entire library system. A tax
   increase passed by the voters in November 2005 allowed the libraries to
   open, but hours remain limited.The American Library Association says
   media reports it has compiled in 2004 showed some $162 million in
   funding cuts to libraries nationwide..

   Survey data suggests the public values free public libraries. A Public
   Agenda survey in 2006 reported 84 percent of the public said
   maintaining free library services should be a top priority for their
   local library. But the survey also found the public was mostly unaware
   of financial difficulties facing their libraries. The survey did not
   ask those surveyed whether they valued free library services more than
   other specific services, such as firefighting.

   In various cost-benefit studies libraries continue to provide an
   exceptional return on the dollar.
   Library of Alençon (built c.1800)
   Enlarge
   Library of Alençon (built c.1800)

Some famous libraries

   Some of the greatest libraries in the world are research libraries. The
   most famous ones include The Humanities and Social Sciences Library of
   the New York Public Library in New York City, the British Library in
   London, Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, and the Library of
   Congress in Washington, D.C..
     * Egypt's ancient Library of Alexandria and modern Bibliotheca
       Alexandrina
     * Ambrosian Library in Milan
     * Asplundhuset -information and more than 100 photos, Stockholms
       stadsbibliotek

     * Assurbanipal's library at Nineveh
     * Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) in Paris
     * Bodleian Library at University of Oxford
     * British Library in London
     * British Library of Political and Economic Science in London
     * Butler Library at Columbia University
     * Cambridge University Library at University of Cambridge
     * Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh
     * Carolina Rediviva at Uppsala University
     * Dutch Royal Library in The Hague
     * Fisher Library at the University of Sydney (largest in the Southern
       Hemisphere)
     * Franklin Public Library in Franklin, Massachusetts(First public
       library in U.S. Original books donated by Benjamin Franklin)
     * Free Library of Philadelphia in Philadelphia
     * Garrison Library in Gibraltar
     * Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University, one of the
       largest single-building university libraries in the world
     * House of Commons Library, Westminster, London
     * Jenkins Law Library in Philadelphia
     * John Rylands Library in Manchester
     * Leiden University Library at Leiden University in Leiden
     * Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
     * Library of Sir Thomas Browne
     * Mitchell Library in Glasgow (Europe's largest public reference
       library)
     * National Library of Australia in Canberra, Australia
     * National Library of Ireland, Dublin
     * New York Public Library in New York
     * Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University,
       Montreal, Canada
     * Persia's ancient Library of Gondishapur
     * Russian National Library in St Petersburg
     * Russian State Library in Moscow
     * Royal Library in Copenhagen
     * Seattle Central Library
     * Staatsbibliothek in Berlin
     * State Library of Victoria in Melbourne
     * Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University
     * Vatican Library in Vatican City
     * Widener Library at Harvard University Probably largest academic
       collection
     * EAST Lab Library at Southside High School's EAST Lab Possibly the
       largest junk-cart collection in all the world.

   Library of Congress
   Enlarge
   Library of Congress

   Other libraries:
     * The St. Phillips Church Parsonage Provincial Library, established
       in 1698 in Charleston, South Carolina, was the first public lending
       library in the American Colonies. See also Benjamin Franklin's free
       public library in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
     * Boston Public Library, an early public lending library in America,
       was established in 1848.
     * Haskell Free Library and Opera House, "The only library in America
       with no books".
     * St. Marys Church, Reigate, Surrey houses the first public lending
       library in England. Opened 14 March 1701.

   Some libraries devoted to a single subject:
     * Chess libraries
     * Esperanto libraries
     * Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, the world's largest
       genealogy library.

   For more extensive lists, see
     * List of libraries that are the subject of a Wikipedia article
     * List of libraries
     * List of national libraries
     * List of university libraries

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   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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