library

a room where books are kept

"they had brandy in the library" a collection of literary documents or records kept for reference or borrowing a depository built to contain books and other materials for reading and study (computing) a collection of standard programs and subroutines that are stored and available for immediate use a building that houses a collection of books and other materials

Alternative meanings: Library (computer science), Library (electronics), Library (biology)'' In its traditional sense, a library is a collection of books and periodicals. It can refer to an individual's private libraryprivate collection, but more often it is a large collection that is funded and maintained by a city or institution. This collection is often used by people who choose not to, or can not afford to, purchase an extensive collection themselves.However, with the collection or invention of media other than books for storing information, many libraries are now also repositories and access points for maps, print (art)prints or other artwork, microfilm, microfiche, audio tapes, Compact discCDs, vinyl recordLPs, video tapes and DVDs, and provide public facilities to access CD-ROM 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. More recently, libraries are understood as extending beyond the physical walls of a building, providing assistance in navigating and analyzing tremendous amounts of knowledge with a variety of digital tools.

Etymology of the word - The word is derived from Latin ''liber'', which means "book." Derivations from the Greek languageGreek ''Bibliotheke'' (from ''Biblos'', book) are used in at least German languageGerman, French languageFrench, Italian languageItalian, Norwegian languageNorwegian, Spanish languageSpanish, Swedish (language)Swedish, Danish languageDanish, Polish languagePolish, Portuguese languagePortuguese, Romanian languageRomanian, Russian languageRussian, Dutch languageDutch, and of course Modern Greek. Other languages, such as Icelandic languageIcelandic, Finnish languageFinnish, Estonian languageEstonian and Persian languagePersian, use words that derive from their own words for book (''Bokasafn'', ''Kirjasto'', and ''Raamatukogu'' and ''Ketabkhaneh'', respectively). Some European languages use a cognate of ''library'' to mean ''bookshop''.

For more translations of the word, see the Wiktionary entry for library: en.wiktionary.org. , now equipped with modern computers]]

History - The first libraries were only partly libraries, being composed for the most part of the unpublished records that make up archives. 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 or legends. Things were much the same in the Papyrus based government records of Ancient Egypt. 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 BC5th century before our era. They were filled with parchment scroll (parchment)scrolls and later on papyrus scrolls. 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 ChinaChinese 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. , with its unique architecture, is a San Diego, CaliforniaSan Diego landmark.]]In IranPersia many libraries were established by the Zoroastrian elite and the Persian Kings. Among the first ones was a royal library in Isfahan (city)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 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.During the Early Middle Ages, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and before the rise of the large ChristianityChristian monastery libraries, IslamIslamic libraries knew a period of great expansion in the Middle East, North Africa, Sicily and Spain. Like the Christian libraries they mostly contained books which were of a codex or modern form instead of scrolls. 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. After but a few centuries many of these libraries were destroyed by MongoliaMongolian 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 centuriesThe contents of these Islamic libraries were copied by Christian monks in Muslim/Chrisian border areas, particularly Spain and Sicily, and from there they eventually made their way into other parts of Christian Europe.The design of the medieval library arose very directly from the fact that these books were manuscripts created via the labor-intensive process of hand copying, and were valuable possessions, were therefore likely to be stolen, and were far too expensive for most people to own. Its architecture derived from the need to chain these books, first to lecterns and later to armaria and bookshelfshelves, in areas that were illuminated by sunlight. Early libraries were located in monastic cloisters associated with scriptoriumscriptoria and 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 EnglandEnglish institutional libraries. In Continental EuropeContinental 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 cheaper, 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 Electric lightelectrical 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.

Types of libraries - Libraries can be divided into categories by several methods:

by the entity (institution, municipality, or corporate body) that supports or perpetuates it

* private libraries

* corporate libraries

* federal libraries

* academic libraries

* historical society libraries

by the type of documents or materials it holds

* digital libraries

* picture (photograph) libraries

* slide libraries

* tool libraries

by the subject matter of documents it holds

* architecture libraries

* fine arts libraries

* military libraries

* medical libraries

* law libraries

by the users it serves

* military communities

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.

* School libraries — Most public and private primary and secondary schools have libraries designed to support the curriculum.

* 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. Many public libraries also serve as community organizations that provide free services and events to the public, particularly children.

* Special libraries — All other libraries fall into this category by default. 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.Also, the governments of most major countries support national librarynational libraries. Two noteworthy examples are the U.S. Library of Congress and the British Library.

Description - 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. Libraries are often staffed by a librarian working from a library reference deskreference desk or information desk to help users find what they are looking for. A Special Collections department will also provide access to old or rare material.

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, and an example of a more recent leader is Michael Lorenzen. Library instruction is closely related to the study of 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 librarydigital libraries and distributed librarydistributed libraries, as well as older libraries that have been retrofitted.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), 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 being relatively expensive, but justifiably less crucial to the community than absolute necessities, such as police, firefighters, schools, and health care. (Closing libraries to fund police forces might be viewed as false economy if the library system keeps a large percentage of the population's youth occupied, the argument being that it helps keep them "off the street" and out of trouble, and perhaps reduces the crime rate by helping improve the overall education level of the local populace.)At any rate, many communities are beginning to feel they have no option but to close down or reduce the capability of their library systems to balance their budgets. In December 2004, Salinas, California almost became the first city in the United States to completely close down its entire library system. Many other communities are dangerously close to a similar outcome.

Some famous libraries -

Assurbanipal's library at Nineveh

Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) in Paris

Bodleian Library at University of Oxford

British Library in London

Cambridge University Library at University of Cambridge

Carolina Rediviva at Uppsala University

Dutch Royal Library in The Hague

Egypt's ancient Library of Alexandria and modern Bibliotheca Alexandrina

Fisher Library at the University of Sydney (largest in the Southern Hemisphere)

Free Library of Philadelphia in Philadelphia

Garrison Library in Gibraltar

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

National Library of Australia in Canberra, Australia

New York Public Library in New York CityNew York

Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

IranPersia's ancient Library of Gondishapur

Russian National Library in St Petersburg

Russian State Library in Moscow

Royal Library, CopenhagenRoyal Library in Copenhagen

Staatsbibliothek in Berlin

Vatican Library in Vatican City 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 libraryEsperanto libraries

Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, the world's largest genealogy library.For more extensive lists, see

:Category:LibrariesList of libraries that are the subject of a Wikipedia article

List of libraries

List of national libraries

List of university libraries

See also -

Bookend

Carnegie libraryCarnegie libraries

Controlled vocabulary

Dewey Decimal Classification

Digital reference services

Interlibrary loan

Librarian

Library and information science

Library of Congress Classification

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Library 2.0

Literature

open access

Public library

Public Library of Science

Slide library

Tool-lending Libraries

External links - CommonsLibrary

:wikisource:Wikisource, ''The Free Library''

ibiblio.org - Libraries : Frequently Asked Questions

liblinks.org - LibLinks - Directory of library resource links organized by US states

techbio.info - LibWeb - Directory of Library servers via WWW

jerryfielden.com - Private Libraries in Ancient Rome

ifla.org - International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions

jenkinslaw.org - Professional Library Associations from Jenkins Law Library

gutenberg.org - A Library Primer, by John Cotton Dana, 1903, setting out the basics of organising and running a library

technologyreview.com - "The Infinite Library," Technology Review article on the Google Library Project.

ala.org - American Libary Association's list of largest librariesCategory:Library and information scienceda:Bibliotekde:Bibliothe keo:Bibliotekoes:Bibliotecafr: Bibliothèquehu:Könyvtár? !(intézmény)id:Perpustakaanja :図書館ko:� �서관nl:Bibliotheeknn:Biblio tekpl:Bibliotekasimple:Library fi:Kirjasto? ja !informaatiotieteetru:Б&# 1080;бли 86;тека ;sv:Bibliotektl:Aklatanzh-cn:& #22270;书馆

SignWriting: Read, write and type Sign Languages
Sign Languages are now written languages! SignWriting is the written form for any Sign Language in the world and is used in 40 countries by deaf and hearing Sign Language users.
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Eric Ode, Music and Poetry for Kids
Singer, songwriter, poet, Eric Ode provides fun music experiences for children and their families. It's a time of songs, skits, puppets, props, poems and much more!
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CESNUR - Center for Studies on New Religions
CESNUR, the Center for Studies on New Religions, is an international network of associations of scholars working in the field of new religious movements. Its director is the Italian scholar Massimo Introvigne. CESNUR is independent from any religious group, Church, denomination or association.
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Rotary Club of Rajkot Midtown
It is a service organization. Members work passioantely for the community.
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LiterNet
Electronic magazine for literature, humanitarian studies and education
http://www.liternet.bg/

KVBA Vision Broadcasting
Alamogordo's Christian TV Station
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International Peace Resource Center Library
Library Resource: International Peace Resource Center is a resource for peace, security, values, justice, equity, freedom, liberty, social change, civic commitment, service learning, teaching, tutoring, research, and other functions. We access the largest libraries in the world, with more than 120 million items. Our access to collections includes books, sound recordings, motion pictures, photographs, maps, and manuscripts. We are a primary resource for writers, readers, teachers, students, and professionals. Our resources are dedicated to art art of communication.
http://www.InternationalPeaceResources.org/library.html

qsBarcode Code39 recognizes Code39 barcode
qs Barcode Code39 can read horizontal Code39 barcodes with 6 digits on monochrome images (windows bitmaps). qsBarcode Code39 is an easy-to-use DLL that can be from many different developer environments, such as C/C++, Java, VisualBasic or Delphi.
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TerraSAR-X (Infoterra GmbH) / Terrasar
From 2006, Infoterra GmbH will provide earth observation radar data of a new quality with up to 1 m resolution. Together with its R&D and Production Network, Infoterra GmbH is currently developing Geo-Information Products, benefiting from the high-quality of the TerraSAR-X data. This website provides information on the offer of TerraSAR-X derived Basic Image Products, Geo-Information Products, and Services.
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Educational Pictures, Inc.
Students & Teachers, home schoolers, can access thousands of standards aligned images in seconds . No advertising makes Educational Pictures the ideal site for young learners as well as college graduates.
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IMISCOE
IMISCOE is an eu-funded network of excellence that brings together more than 350 researchers from selected European institutes. Together they build a research programme on migration, integration and social cohesion. Furthermore they create a system for training in this field and for dissemination to a broad public (specifically policy makers)
http://www.imiscoe.org/

rekord.net ....the record collector's source
www.rekord.net ....we provide the good music on vinyl we are specialized in finding and trading rare vinyl and special CD Editions of most of the musical styles: Jazz, Funk, Library, Soul, Deep house , Techno, Garage, Disco, Rap, Elektro, Drum&bass, KrautRock, Psychedelic Rock, Roots Reggae, Dub, Chanson, Folk.... all kinds of collectors items (Ltd. editions, hard to find rarities, deleted backstock...etc)
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Providing up to date information of exciting annual events, festivals, movies, clubs, attractions, and a comprehensive business directory of over 1000 web sites of Markham, including help to job agencies and 25 top job search engines for employment.
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Library of Congress
The national library of the US, serving the US Congress and the residents of the US.
http://www.loc.gov/

The Internet Public Library
Online public library features directories of online texts, newspapers, magazines, reference materials with special sections for youth.
http://www.ipl.org/

The British Library
Formed in 1973 to serve scholars, researchers and large users of information. Based in London and Boston Spa.
http://www.bl.uk/

WWW Virtual Library
An expert-run catalog of sections of the web.
http://www.vlib.org/

National Library of Medicine
The world's largest medical library. It collects materials in all major areas of the health sciences and to a lesser degree in such areas as chemistry, physics, botany and zoology.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/