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In its most general sense a library is a collection of books and other reference materials. The term is usually used to refer to a public, school, or institutional library. Such a library is open to consultation by the public, students, or patrons or employees of an institution, and often features a reference desk. Many libraries (called lending libraries) make at least some of their books available for borrowing, so readers can use them at home, over a period of days or weeks. As well as books, many libraries are now repositories and/or access points for other media, such as maps, microfilm, microfiche, audio tapes, CDss, LPs, video tapes, CD-ROMs and DVDs, and have facilities to use the Internet.
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2 Library management 3 Library use 4 Some famous libraries 5 See also |
The word is derived from Latin liber, which means "book." Derivations from the Greek Bibliotheke (from Biblos, book) are used in at least German, French, Spanish, Swedish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Dutch. Other languages, such as Icelandic, Finnish, and Estonian, use words that derive from their own words for book (Bokasafn, Kirjasto, and Raamatukogu, respectively).
Basic tasks in library management include the planning of acquisition (which materials should be acquired), library classification, preservation of materials (especially rare and fragile materials such as manuscripts), borrowing, 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.
Many persons do not know how to use a library effectively. Fear and anxiety are common in some users. These problems drove the emergence of the library instruction movement, which advocates library user education. Library instruction has been practiced in the USA since the 19th century. One of the leaders of the library instruction movement in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is Michael Lorenzen. Library instruction is closely related the study of information literacy.
Librarians need to let the public know what materials are present in their library, and the public needs to know how to access that information. Traditionally, this was accomplished by card catalogs, but the emergence of the Internet has led to the adoption of digital catalogs, 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.
Though books are nowadays produced using a digital version of the content, for most books such a version is not available to the public (i.e. neither in the library nor on internet).
simple:Library
Etymology of the word
Library management
Library use
Some famous libraries
Other libraries:
Some libraries that specialize in one subject:
For more extensive lists, see
See also