Acronym Definition
ALAO Academic Library Association Online
ALAO Academic Library Association of Ohio
ALAO Alabama Academy of Ophthalmology
Academic Library Association Online
A library is a collection of information, sources, resources, and services: it
is organized for use and maintained by a public body, an institution, or a
private individual. In the more traditional sense, a library is 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 microform
(microfilm/microfiche), audio tapes, CDs, LPs, cassettes, videotapes, and DVDs.
Libraries may also provide public facilities to access CD-ROMs, 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,
librarians, who are experts at finding and organizing information and at
interpreting information needs.
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 Niavaran branch of the National Library of IranThe first libraries were only
partly libraries, being composed for the most part of unpublished records, which
are usually viewed as archives, not libraries. Archaeological findings from the
ancient city-states of Sumer have revealed temple rooms full of clay tablets in
cuneiform script. These archives were made up almost 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 Ptolem?us, 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. There is also evidence of those libraries at Nippur of about 1900
B.C. and those at Nineveh of about 700 B.C. as showing a library classification
system.
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 667 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. In Aleppo, for example the largest
and probably the oldest mosque library, the Sufiya, located at the city's Grand
Umayyad Mosque, contained a large book collection of which 10 000 volumes were
reportedly bequeathed by the city's most famous ruler, Prince Sayf al-Dawla.
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 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 9th century Abbasid Caliph al-Mutawakkil
of Iraq, even ordered the construction of a ‘zawiyat qurra literally an
enclosure for readers which was `lavishly furnished and equipped.' In Shiraz
Adhud al-Daula (d. 983CE) set up a library, described by the medieval historian,
al-Muqaddasi, as`a complex of buildings surrounded by gardens with lakes and
waterways. The buildings were topped with domes, and comprised an upper and a
lower story with a total, according to the chief official, of 360 rooms.... In
each department, catalogues were placed on a shelf... the rooms were furnished
with carpets...'. 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 (wooden chests), 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 forbade 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, it had a huge
impact on how the library operated. Also, 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.
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
school libraries
public 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 (See: Theological Libraries and Librarianship)
by the users they serve
military communities
users who are blind or visually/physically handicapped (see National Library
Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped)
by traditional professional divisions:
Academic libraries — 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 reading groups and toddler 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's 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.
Organization
Libraries almost invariably contain long aisles with rows and 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 cataloguing 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; common
collections are children's literature, young adult literature, and genealogy
materials.
Collection Development orders materials and maintains materials budgets.
Library use
Library patrons may 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.
In United States public libraries, beginning in the 19th century these problems
drove the emergence of the library instruction movement, which advocated library
user education. One of the early leaders was John Cotton Dana. The basic form of
library instruction is generally known as information literacy.
Libraries inform their users 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).
See public library for funding issues for public libraries.
Library of Alen?on (built c. 1800)
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 Russian National Library in St Petersburg,
the British Library in London, Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, and
the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C..
Assurbanipal's library at Nineveh, founded between 669-631 BC.
Egypt's Library of Alexandria (founded in 3rd century BC) and modern Bibliotheca
Alexandrina.
Baghdad's House of Wisdom, founded in 8th century AD.
Islamic Spain's library of Cordoba, founded in 9th century.
Egypt's library of Cairo, founded in 10th century.
Tripoli's Dar il-'ilm, destroyed in 1109.
Ambrosian Library in Milan opened to the public, December 8, 1609.
Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) in Paris, 1720.
Boston Public Library in Boston, 1826.
Bodleian Library at University of Oxford 1602, books collection begin around
1252.
Boston Public Library, an early public lending library in America, was
established in 1848.
British Library in London created in 1973 by the British Library Act of 1972
(Originally part of the British Museum founded 1753).
British Library of Political and Economic Science in London, 1896.
Butler Library at Columbia University, 1934
Cambridge University Library at University of Cambridge, 1931.
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, 1895.
Carolina Rediviva at Uppsala University, 1841
Dutch Royal Library in The Hague, 1798
The European Library, 2004
Firestone Library at Princeton University, 1948
Fisher Library at the University of Sydney (largest in the Southern Hemisphere),
1908
Franklin Public Library in Franklin, Massachusetts (the first public library in
the U.S.; original books donated by Benjamin Franklin in 1731)
Free Library of Philadelphia in Philadelphia established February 18, 1891.
Garrison Library in Gibraltar, 1793.
Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University, 1924, probably the largest
single-building university library in the world.
Haskell Free Library and Opera House, which straddles the Canada-US border.
House of Commons Library, Westminster, London. Established 1818.
Jenkins Law Library in Philadelphia founded 1802.
Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem, Israel, 1892.
John Rylands Library in Manchester 1972.
Leiden University Library at Leiden University in Leiden began at 1575 with
confiscated monastery books. Officially open in October 31, 1587.
Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. 1800.
Library of Sir Thomas Browne, 1711
Mitchell Library in Glasgow (Europe's largest public reference library)
National Library of Belarus in Minsk, 2006.
National Library of Australia in Canberra, Australia
National Library of Iran, 1937.
National Library of Ireland in Dublin, 1877.
National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, 1925.
National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, 1907.
New York Public Library in New York
Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Powell Library at UCLA, part of the UCLA Library.
Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago, one of the largest repositories
of books in the world.
Royal Library in Copenhagen, 1793.
Russian State Library in Moscow, 1862.
Sassanid's ancient Library of Gondishapur around 489.
Seattle Central Library
Staatsbibliothek in Berlin
State Library of New South Wales in Sydney
State Library of Victoria in Melbourne
Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, 1931.
St. Marys Church, Reigate, Surrey houses the first public lending library in
England. Opened 14 March 1701.
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.
Vatican Library in Vatican City, 1448 (but existed before).
Widener Library at Harvard University (Harvard University Library including all
branches has the largest academic collection overall.)
Some libraries devoted to a single subject:
