A
library is a collection of sources, resources,
and services, and the structure in which it is housed; 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. It can mean the collection, the building or
room that houses such a collection, or both. 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,
statistics,
electronics and
biology.
Public and institutional collections and services may be intended
for use 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. In addition to
providing materials, libraries also provide the services of
librarians who are experts at finding and
organizing information and at interpreting information needs.
However, with the sets and collection of media and of
media other than books for
storing information, many libraries are now also
repositories and access points for
maps,
prints, or other
documents and various storage media such as
microform (microfilm/microfiche),
audio tapes,
CDs,
cassettes,
videotapes,
DVDs, and
video games. Libraries may also provide public
facilities to access 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. They 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.
Early history
Antiquity
The first two libraries were composed for the most part, of
published
records, a particular type of
library called
archives. 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.
There is
also evidence of libraries at Nippur
about 1900
B.C. and those at Nineveh
about 700
B.C. showing a library
classification system.
Over
30,000 clay tablets from the Library of Ashurbanipal have been
discovered at Nineveh , providing
archaeologists with an amazing wealth of Mesopotamian literary,
religious and administrative work. Among the findings
werethe
Enuma Elish , also known as
the Epic of Creation, which depicts a traditional
Babylonian view of creation, the
Epic
of Gilgamesh, a large selection of “omen texts” including
Enuma Anu Enlil which “contained omens dealing with the
moon, its visibility, eclipses, and conjunction with planets and
fixed stars, the sun, its corona, spots, and eclipses, the weather,
namely lightning, thunder, and clouds, and the planets and their
visibility, appearance, and stations.”, and astronomic/astrological
texts, as well as standard lists used by scribes and scholars such
as word lists, bilingual vocabularies, lists of signs and synonyms,
and lists of medical diagnoses.
Libraries in Persian Empire
During the
Achaemenid Persian Empire
(558–330 BC) the religious and scientific books of Persia
since
Zoroaster, were archived in the libraries
of "Ganj-i-hapigan" in Takht-i-Suleiman
and "Dez-i-Napesht" in Persepolis
. These books were probably in the fields of
philosophy, astronomy, alchemy and
medical sciences, the fields in
which Magus of Persia were master
in. After the invasion of Persia by Alexander the Great all these books were
burned. It has been mentioned in the book
Arda Viraf that :
"He came to Persia with severe cruelty and war and
devastation... and destroyed the metropolis and empire, and made
them desolate... all the avesta and zand, written upon prepared
cow-skins and with gold ink, was deposited in the archives... he
burned them up."
Libraries in the Hellenic world and Rome
Private or personal libraries made up of
non-fiction and
fiction
books (as opposed to the state or institutional records kept in
archives) appeared in
classical
Greece in 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.
By the time of Augustus there were public
libraries near the forums of Rome: there were libraries in the
Porticus Octaviae near the
Theatre of Marcellus, in the
temple of Apollo Palatinus, and in the Biblioteca Ulpiana in the
Forum of
Trajan
. The state archives were kept in a structure
on the slope between the Roman Forum
and the Capitoline Hill
.
Private libraries appeared during the late republic:
Seneca inveighed against libraries fitted
out for show by non-reading owners who scarcely read their titles
in the course of a lifetime, but displayed the scrolls in bookcases
(
armaria) of citrus wood inlaid with ivory that ran right
to the ceiling: "by now, like bathrooms and hot water, a library is
got up as standard equipment for a fine house (
domus). Libraries were amenities suited to a
villa, such as Cicero's at Tusculum,
Maecenas's several villas, or
Livy the Younger's, all described in
surving letters.
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.
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.
Libraries
were filled with parchment scrolls as at Library of 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 which were open to an educated public (like the Library of
Alexandria
, once the largest library in the ancient
world), 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.
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.
Through
Origen and especially the scholarly
presbyter
Pamphilus of
Caesarea, an avid collector of books of Scripture, the
theological school of Caesarea won a reputation for having
the most extensive ecclesiastical library
of the time, containing more than 30,000 manuscripts:
Gregory Nazianzus,
Basil the Great,
Jerome and others came to study there.
With education firmly in Christian hands, however, many of the
works of classical antiquity were no longer considered useful. Old
texts were washed off the valuable parchment and papyrus, which
were reused, forming
palimpsests. As
scrolls gave way to the new book-form, the
codex, which was universally used for Christian
literature, old manuscript scrolls were cut apart and used to
stiffen leather bindings.
Ancient Chinese libraries
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.
Islamic libraries
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
. 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 papermaking from China, with a paper 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. 983) 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, Roman and
Sanskrit non-fiction and the classics of
literature. This flowering of Islamic learning ceased centuries
later when learning began declining in the
Islamic world, after many of these libraries
were destroyed by
Mongol invasions.
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.
A number of distinct features of the modern library were introduced
in the Islamic world, where libraries not only served as a
collection of manuscripts as was the case in ancient libraries, but
also as a public library and
lending
library, a centre for the instruction and spread of sciences
and ideas, a place for meetings and discussions, and sometimes as a
lodging for scholars or
boarding school for pupils. The concept of
the
library catalogue was also
introduced in medieval Islamic libraries, where books were
organized into specific
genres and
categories.
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 Christian libraries
With the retrenchment of literacy in the Roman west during the
fourth and fifth centuries, fewer private libraries were
maintained, and those in unfortified
villas proved to be among their most combustible
contents.
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.
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."
Lending meant more than just having another work to read to
librarians; while the work was in their possession, it could be
copied, thus enriching the library's own collecion. The book lent
as a counter effort was often copied in the same way, so both
libraries ended up having an additional title.
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
.
Early modern libraries
Johannes Gutenberg's movable type
innovation in the 1400s revolutionized bookmaking. From the 15th
century in central and northern Italy, the assiduously assembled
libraries of
humanists and
their enlightened patrons provided a nucleus around which an
"
academy" of scholars congregated in each
Italian city of consequence.
Cosimo de
Medici in Florence
established his own collection, which formed the
basis of the Laurentian Library
. In Rome, the papal collections were brought
together by Pope Nicholas V, in
separate Greek and Latin libraries, and housed by Pope Sixtus IV, who consigned the Bibliotheca
Apostolica Vaticana
to the care
of his librarian, the humanist Bartolomeo Platina in February
1475. In the 16th century Sixtus V bisected Bramante's Cortile del
Belvedere
with a cross-wing to house the Apostolic Library in
suitable magnificence. The sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries saw other privately-endowed libraries assembled in Rome:
the Vallicelliana, formed from the books of Saint
Filippo Neri, with other distinguished
libraries such as that of
Cesare
Baronio, the Biblioteca Angelica founded by the Augustinian
Angelo Rocca, which was the only truly
public library in Counter-Reformation Rome; the Biblioteca
Alessandrina with which
Pope
Alexander VII endowed the
University of Rome; the Biblioteca
Casanatense of the Cardinal
Girolamo
Casanate; and finally the Biblioteca Corsiniana founded by the
bibliophile
Clement XII Corsini and
his nephew Cardinal Neri Corsini, still housed in Palazzo Corsini
in via della Lungara.
A lot of factors combined to create a "golden age of libraries"
between 1600 and 1700: The quantity of books had gone up, as the
cost had gone down, there was a renewal in the interest of
classical literature and culture, nationalism was encouraging
nations to build great libraries, universities were playing a more
prominent role in education, and renaissance thinkers and writers
were producing great works.
Some of the more important libraries include
the Bodleian
Library
at Oxford, the Library of the British
Museum
, the Mazarine Library
in Paris, and the National
Central Library
in Italy, the Prussian State Library
, the M.E.
Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public
Library of St. Petersburg, and many more.
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
- by the type of documents or materials they hold
- by the subject matter of documents they hold
- by the users they serve
- 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 members of the general
public in whole or in part.
- 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.
- 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.
- School libraries — Most public
and private primary and secondary schools have libraries designed
to support the school's curriculum.
- 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.
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.
Public libraries
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 beginning of the modern, free, open
access libraries really got its start in the U.K. in 1847.
Parliament appointed a committee, led by William
Ewart, on Public Libraries to consider the necessity of
establishing libraries through the nation: In 1849 their report
noted the poor condition of library service, it recommended the
establishment of free public libraries all over the country, and it
led to the Public Libraries Act in 1850, which allowed all cities
with populations exceeding 10,000 to levy taxes for the support of
public libraries. Another important act was the 1870 Public School
Law, which increased literacy, thereby the demand for libraries, so
by 1877, more than 75 cities had established free libraries, and by
1900 the number had reached 300. This finally marks the start of
the public library as we know it. And these acts led to similar
laws in other countries, most notably the U.S.
1876 is a well known year in the history of librarianship in the
United States. The
American
Library Association was formed, as well as
The American
Library Journal,
Melvil Dewey
published his decimal based system of classification, and the
United States Bureau of Education published its report, "Public
libraries in the United States of America; their history,
condition, and management." During the post-Civil War years, there
was a rise in the establishment of public libraries, a movement led
chiefly by newly formed
women's clubs.
They contributed their own collections of books, conducted lengthy
fundraising campaigns for buildings, and lobbied within their
communities for financial support for libraries, as well as with
legislatures and the
Carnegie
Library Endowment founded in the 20th century. They led the
establishment of 75-80 percent of the libraries in communities
across the country. The American Library Association continues to
play a major role in libraries to this day, and Dewey's
classification system, although under heavy criticism of late,
still remains the prevailing method of classifing used in the
United States.
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. This arrangement 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). The introduction of
electrical lighting had a huge impact on how
the library
operated. 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. As more space was needed, a method of moving
shelves on tracks (compact shelving) was introduced to cut down on
otherwise wasted aisle space.
Library 2.0, a term coined in 2005, is
the library's response to the challenge of Google and an attempt to
meet the changing needs of users by using
web
2.0 technology. Some of the aspects of Library 2.0 include,
commenting, tagging, bookmarking, discussions, using social
software, plug-ins, and widgets. Inspired by web 2.0, it is an
attempt to make the library a more user-driven institution.
Despite the importance of public libraries, they are routinely
having their budget cut by state legislature. Funding has dwindled
so bad that some smaller public libraries have been forced to cut
their hours and release employees. While most donations made to
public libraries are from private benefactors, they still receive
very little in the way of state funding. One of the more recent
efforts that has been made to aid public libraries is the
Attorney.org
Save-A-Library campaign in which they will profile public libraries
from around the country in hopes of raising donations.
Organization
Libraries usually contain long aisles
with 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.
- Collection Development - Orders materials and maintains
materials budgets.
- 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.
- Technical Services - Works behind the scenes cataloguing and
processing new materials and deaccessioning weeded materials.
- Stacks Maintenance - Re-shelves materials that have been
returned to the library after patron use and shelves materials that
have been processed by Technical Services. Stacks Maintenance also
shelf reads the material in the stacks to ensure that it is in the
correct library classification order.
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).
Standardization
The
International
Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published several
standards regarding the management of libraries through its
Technical Committee 46 (TC46), which is focused on "libraries,
documentation and information centres, publishing, archives,
records management, museum documentation, indexing and abstracting
services, and information science". The following is a partial list
of some of them:
- ISO 2789:2006 Information and documentation — International
library statistics
- ISO 11620:1998 Information and documentation — Library
performance indicators
- ISO 11799:2003 Information and documentation — Document storage
requirements for archive and library materials
- ISO 14416:2003 Information and documentation — Requirements for
binding of books, periodicals, serials and other paper documents
for archive and library use — Methods and materials
- ISO/TR 20983:2003 Information and documentation — Performance
indicators for electronic library services
Library use
Patrons may not know how to fully use the library's resources. This
can be due to some individuals' unease in approaching a staff
member. Ways in which a library's content is displayed or accessed
may have the most impact on use. An antiquated or clumsy search
system, or staff unwilling or untrained to engage their patrons,
will limit a library's usefulness. 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
online public access
catalogs, OPACs), 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 criticized 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 libraries have been
accused of precipitously throwing out valuable information in card
catalogs, most modern ones have nonetheless made the move to
electronic catalog databases. Large libraries may be scattered
within multiple buildings across a town, each having multiple
floors, with multiple rooms housing the resources across a series
of shelves. Once a user has located a resource within the catalog,
they must then use navigational guidance to retrieve the resource
physically; a process that may be assisted through signage, maps,
GPS systems or RFID tagging.
Finland
has the highest number of registered book borrowers
per capita in the world. Over half of Finland's population
are registered borrowers. In the U.S., public library users have
borrowed roughly 15 books per user per year from 1856 to 1978. From
1978 to 2004, book circulation per user declined approximately 50%.
The growth of audiovisuals circulation, estimated at 25% of total
circulation in 2004, accounts for about half of this decline.
Shift to digital libraries
Digital libraries can be easily
accesible through a computer
In the past couple of years it is evident that more and more people
are using the Internet to gather and retrieve data. “The average
American academic library saw its overall number of transactions
decline approximately 2.2%.” Libraries are trying to keep up with
the digital world and the new generation of students that are used
to having information just one click away. For example, “The
University of California Library System saw a 54% decline in
circulation between 1991 to 2001 of 8,377,000 books to 3,832,00”
From the perspective of some college undergraduates, libraries are
not as important as the Internet. Some believe that going to the
library and reading a whole book to find information takes up too
much time as opposed to two clicks in a search engine.
These facts might be a consequence of the increased availability of
e-books. In 1999-2000, 105 ARL university libraries spent almost
$100 million on electronic resources, which is an increase of
nearly $23 million from the previous year. A 2003 report by the
Open E-book Forum found that close to a million e-books had been
sold in 2002, generating nearly $8 million in revenue.” . Another
example of the shift to digital libraries can be seen in Cushing
Academy’s decision to dispense with its library of printed books —
more than 20,000 volumes in all — and switch over entirely to
digital media resources.Nash, Richard. "Books: "An Outdated
Technolgy"" Weblog post. The Late Age of Print. 4 Sept. 2009. Web.
19 Nov. 2009.
/www.thelateageofprint.org/2009/09/04/books-outdated-technology/>
Lists of libraries
See also
References
- The American International Encyclopedia, J.J. Little
& Ives, New York 1954, Volume IX
-
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/research_projects/ashurbanipal_library_phase_1.aspx
"Assurbanipal Library Phase 1", British Museum One
- Epic of Creation in Dalley, Stephanie. Myths from
Mesopotamia. Oxford, 1989: pg.233-81
- Epic of Gilgamesh in Dalley, Stephanie. Myths from
Mesopotamia. Oxford, 1989: pg.50-135
- Van De Mieroop, Marc. A History of the Ancient Near East ca.
3000-323 BC. Oxford,UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2007: pg.
263
- Denkard (4:15) link
- Arda Viraf (1:1:4-8) link
- Epitome of Book I
- Not the familiar Euclid.
- The writer was Alexandrian; the sophisticates in
Deipnosophistae were at a banquet in Rome.
- See Library of Alexandria.
- Seneca, De tranquillitate animi ix.4-7.
- in
- Survivor: The History of the Library
- This section on Roman Renaissance libraries follows Kenneth M.
Setton, "From Medieval to Modern Library" Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society 104.4,
Dedication of the APS Library Hall, Autumn General Meeting,
November, 1959 (August 1960:371-390) p372ff.
- Paula D. Watson, “Founding Mothers: The Contribution of Women’s
Organizations to Public Library Development in the United States”,
Library Quarterly, Vol. 64, Issue 3, 1994, p.236
- Teva Scheer, “The “Praxis” Side of the Equation: Club Women and
American Public Administration”, Administrative Theory &
Praxis, Vol. 24, Issue 3, 2002, p.525
-
http://www.iso.org/iso/standards_development/technical_committees/list_of_iso_technical_committees/iso_technical_committee.htm?commid=48750
-
http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_tc_browse.htm?commid=48750
- The humble Number One: Finland — Virtual
Finland
- Statistics on Book Circulation Per User of U.S.
Public Libraries Since 1856 from galbithink.org
- Applegate, Rachel. "Whose Decline? Which Academic Libraries are
"Deserted" in Terms of Refernce Transactions?" Refernce & User
Services Quarterly 2nd ser. 48 (2008): 176-89. Print.
- University of California Library Statistics 1990–91,
University-wide Library Planning, University of California Office
of the President (July 1991): 12; University of California Library
Statistics July 2001, 7, http://www.slp.ucop.edu/stats/00-01.pdf
(accessed July 17, 2005); University of California Library
Statistics July 2004, 7, http://www.slp.ucop.edu/stats/03-04.pdf
(accessed July 17, 2005).
- "ARL Libraries Spend Nearly $100 Million on Electronic
Resources," ARL Bimonthly Report 219, Association of Research
Libraries (December 2001),
http://www.arl.org/newsltr/219/eresources.html (accessed July 17,
2005).
- Striphas, Ted. The Late Age of Print: Everday Book Culture From
Consumerism to Control. New York City: Columbia UP, 2009.
Print.
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