BIT 2108 - Lesson 3a - Bibliothek (Library) - Britannica Online Encyclopedia

2/7/2021 Library -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
Library
Library, traditionally, collection of books used for reading or study, or the building or room in
which such a collection is kept. The word derives from the Latin liber, “book,” whereas a
Latinized Greek word, bibliotheca, is the origin of the word for library in German, Russian,
and the Romance languages.
From their historical beginnings as places to keep the business, legal, historical, and religious
records of a civilization, libraries have emerged since the middle of the 20th century as a far-
reaching body of information resources and services that do not even require a building. Rapid
developments in computers, telecommunications, and other technologies have made it possible
to store and retrieve information in many different forms and from any place with a computer
and a telephone connection. The terms digital library and virtual library have begun to be used
to refer to the vast collections of information to which people gain access over the Internet,
cable television, or some other type of remote electronic connection.
This article provides a history of libraries from their founding in the ancient world through the
latter half of the 20th century, when both technological and political forces radically reshaped
library development. It offers an overview of several types of traditional libraries and explains
how libraries collect, organize, and make accessible their collections. Further discussion of the
application of the theory and technology of information science in libraries and related fields
is included in the article information processing.
The changing role of libraries
Libraries are collections of books, manuscripts, journals, and other sources of recorded
information. They commonly include reference works, such as encyclopaedias that provide
factual information and indexes that help users find information in other sources; creative
works, including poetry, novels, short stories, music scores, and photographs; nonfiction, such
as biographies, histories, and other factual reports; and periodical publications, including
magazines, scholarly journals, and books published as part of a series. As home use of records,
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CD-ROMs, and audiotapes and videotapes has increased, library collections have begun to
include these and other forms of media, too.
Libraries were involved early in exploiting information technologies. For many years libraries
have participated in cooperative ventures with other libraries. Different institutions have
shared cataloging and information about what each has in its collection. They have used this
shared information to facilitate the borrowing and lending of materials among libraries.
Librarians have also become expert in finding information from on-line and CD-ROM
databases.
As society has begun to value information more highly, the so-called information industry has
developed. This industry encompasses publishers, software developers, on-line information
services, and other businesses that package and sell information products for a profit. It
provides both an opportunity and a challenge to libraries. On the one hand, as more
information becomes available in electronic form, libraries no longer have to own an article or
a certain piece of statistical information, for example, to obtain it quickly for a user. On the
other hand, members of the information industry seem to be offering alternatives to libraries.
A student with her own computer can now go directly to an on-line service to locate, order,
and receive a copy of an article without ever leaving her home.
Although the development of digital libraries means that people do not have to go to a
building for some kinds of information, users still need help to locate the information they
want. In a traditional library building, a user has access to a catalog that will help locate a
book. In a digital library, a user has access to catalogs to find traditional library materials, but
much of the information on, for example, the Internet can not be found through one commonly
accepted form of identification. This problem necessitates agreement on standard ways to
identify pieces of electronic information (sometimes called meta-data) and the development of
codes (such as HTML [Hypertext Markup Language] and SGML [Standard Generalized
Markup Language]) that can be inserted into electronic texts.
For many years libraries have bought books and periodicals that people can borrow or
photocopy for personal use. Publishers of electronic databases, however, do not usually sell
their product, but instead they license it to libraries (or sites) for specific uses. They usually
charge libraries a per-user fee or a per-unit fee for the specific amount of information the
library uses. When libraries do not own these resources, they have less control over whether
older information is saved for future use—another important cultural function of libraries. In
the electronic age, questions of copyright, intellectual property rights, and the economics of
information have become increasingly important to the future of library service.
Increased availability of electronic information has led libraries, particularly in schools,

colleges, and universities, to develop important relationships to their institutions’ computer
centres. In some places the computer centre is the place responsible for electronic information
and the library is responsible for print information. In some educational institutions librarians
have assumed responsibility for both the library collection and computer services.
As technology has changed and allowed ever new ways of creating, storing, organizing, and
providing information, public expectation of the role of libraries has increased. Libraries have
responded by developing more sophisticated on-line catalogs that allow users to find out
whether or not a book has been checked out and what other libraries have it. Libraries have
also found that users want information faster, they want the full text of a document instead of a
citation to it, and they want information that clearly answers their questions. In response,
libraries have provided Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI) services, in which
librarians choose information that may be of interest to their users and forward it to them
before the users request it.
The changes in libraries outlined above originated in the United States and other English-
speaking countries. But electronic networks do not have geographic boundaries, and their
influence has spread rapidly. With Internet connections in Peking (Beijing), Moscow, and
across the globe, people who did not have access to traditional library services now have the
opportunity to get information about all types of subjects, free of political censorship.
As libraries have changed, so, too, has the role of the librarian. Increasingly librarians have
assumed the role of educator to teach their users how to find information both in the library
and over electronic networks. Public librarians have expanded their roles by providing local
community information through publicly accessible computing systems. Some librarians are
experts about computers and computer software. Others are concerned with how computer
technologies can preserve the human cultural records of the past or assure that library
collections on crumbling paper or in old computer files can still be used by people many
centuries in the future.
The work of librarians has also moved outside library walls. Librarians have begun to work in
the information industry as salespeople, designers of new information systems, researchers,
and information analysts. They also are found in such fields as marketing and public relations
and in such organizations as law firms, where staffs need rapid access to information.
Although libraries have changed significantly over the course of history, as the following
section demonstrates, their cultural role has not. Libraries remain responsible for acquiring or
providing access to books, periodicals, and other media that meet the educational, recreational,
and informational needs of their users. They continue to keep the business, legal, historical,
and religious records of a civilization. They are the place where a toddler can hear his first
story and a scholar can carry out her research.
Leigh S. Estabrook
The history of libraries
The ancient world
In earliest times there was no distinction between a record room (or archive) and a library, and
in this sense libraries can be said to have existed for almost as long as records have been kept.
A temple in the Babylonian town of Nippur, dating from the first half of the 3rd millennium
BC, was found to have a number of rooms filled with clay tablets, suggesting a well-stocked
archive or library. Similar collections of Assyrian clay tablets of the 2nd millennium BC were
found at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt. Ashurbanipal (reigned 668–c. 627 BC), the last of the great
kings of Assyria, maintained an archive of some 25,000 tablets, comprising transcripts and
texts systematically collected from temples throughout his kingdom.
Many collections of records were destroyed in the course of wars or were purposely purged
when rulers were replaced or when governments fell. In ancient China, for example, the
emperor Shih huang-ti, a member of the Ch’in dynasty and ruler of the first unified Chinese
empire, ordered that historical records other than those of the Ch’in be destroyed so that
history might be seen to begin with his dynasty. Repression of history was lifted, however,
under the Han dynasty, which succeeded the Ch’in in 206 BC; works of antiquity were
recovered, the writing of literature as well as record keeping were encouraged, and
classification schemes were developed. Some favoured a seven-part classification, which
included the Confucian classics, philosophy, rhymed work (both prose and poetry), military
prose, scientific and occult writings, summaries, and medicine. A later system categorized
writings into four types: the classics, history, philosophy, and miscellaneous works. The steady
growth of libraries was facilitated by the entrenchment of the civil service system, founded in
the 2nd century during the Han dynasty and lasting into the 20th century; this required
applicants to memorize classics and to pass difficult examinations.
Greece and Alexandria
In the West the idea of book collecting, and hence of libraries as the word was understood for
several centuries, had its origin in the classical world. Most of the larger Greek temples seem
to have possessed libraries, even in quite early times; many certainly had archive repositories.
The tragedian Euripides was known as a private collector of books, but the first important
institutional libraries in Athens arose during the 4th century BC with the great schools of
philosophy. Their texts were written on perishable materials such as papyrus and parchment,
and much copying took place. The Stoics, having no property, owned no library; the schools of
Plato and of the Epicureans did possess libraries, the influence of which lasted for many
centuries. But the most famous collection was that of the Peripatetic school, founded by
Aristotle and systematically organized by him with the intention of facilitating scientific
research. A full edition of Aristotle’s library was prepared from surviving texts by Andronicus
of Rhodes and Tyrannion in Rome about 60 BC. The texts had reached Rome as war booty
carried off by Sulla when he sacked Athens in 86 BC.
Aristotle’s library formed the basis, mainly by means of copies, of the library established at
Alexandria, which became the greatest in antiquity. It was planned by Ptolemy I Soter in the
3rd century BC and brought into being by his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus with the
collaboration of Demetrius of Phaleron, their adviser. The founders of this library apparently
aimed to collect the whole body of Greek literature in the best available copies, arranged in
systematic order so as to form the basis of published commentaries. Its collections of papyrus
and vellum scrolls are said to have numbered hundreds of thousands. Situated in a temple of
the Muses called the Mouseion, it was staffed by many famous Greek writers and scholars,
including the grammarian and poet Callimachus (d. c. 240 BC), the astronomer and writer
Eratosthenes (d. c. 194 BC), the philosopher Aristophanes of Byzantium (d. 180 BC), and
Aristarchus of Samothrace (d. 145 BC), the foremost critical scholar of antiquity.
Pergamum
In Asia Minor a library rivaling that of Alexandria was set up at Pergamum during the reigns
of Attalus I Soter (d. 197 BC) and Eumenes II (d. 160/159 BC). Parchment (charta pergamena)
was said to have been developed there after the copying of books was impeded by Ptolemy
Philadelphus’ ban on the export of papyrus from Egypt. (Parchment proved to be more durable
than papyrus and so marks a significant development in the history of technical advances in
the dissemination of knowledge.) The library was bequeathed with the whole of the kingdom
of Pergamum to the Roman people in 133 BC, and Plutarch records an allegation that Mark
Antony gave its 200,000 volumes to Cleopatra, to become part of the Alexandrian library.
Rome
There were many private libraries in classical Rome, including that of Cicero. Indeed, it
became highly fashionable to own a library, judging from the strictures of the moralizing
statesman Seneca and the spiteful jibes by the poet Lucian on the uncultured “book clown.”
Excavations at both Rome and Herculaneum have revealed what were undoubtedly library
rooms in private houses, one at Herculaneum being fitted with bookcases around the walls. A
Roman statesman and general, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, who was reckoned one of the richest
men in the Roman world at that time and was famous for his luxurious way of life, acquired as
part of his war booty an enormous library, which he generously put at the disposal of those
who were interested. His biographer, Plutarch, speaks appreciatively of the quality of his book
collection, and Cicero tells of visiting the library to borrow a book and finding his friend Cato
ensconced there surrounded by books of the Stoic philosophy.
Julius Caesar planned a public library and entrusted the implementation of his plans to an
outstanding scholar and writer, Marcus Terentius Varro, also the author of a treatise on
libraries, De bibliothecis (which has not survived). Caesar died before his plans were carried
out, but a public library was built within five years by the literary patron Asinius Pollio.
Describing its foundation in his Natural History, Pliny coined a striking phrase that has
application to libraries generally: ingenia hominum rem publicam fecit (“He made men’s
talents a public possession”). Libraries were also set up by Tiberius, Vespasian, Trajan, and
many of the later emperors; the Bibliotheca Ulpia, which was established by Trajan about AD
100 and continued until the 5th century, was also the Public Record Office of Rome.
Byzantium
In the East the library tradition was picked up at Constantinople. It was probably at Caesarea
that Constantine I the Great’s order for 50 copies of the Christian scriptures was carried out.
Under Constantine himself, Julian, and Justinian, the imperial, patriarchal (in the religious
sense), and scholarly libraries at Constantinople amassed large collections; their real
significance is that for a thousand years they preserved, through generations of uncritical
teachers, copyists, and editors, the treasures of the schools and libraries of Athens, Alexandria,
and Asia Minor. Losses occurred, but these were mostly due to the habit, noticeable especially
in the 9th century, of replacing original texts with epitomes, or summaries. By far the greater
part of the Greek classics, however, was faithfully preserved and handed on to the schools and
universities of western Europe, and for this a debt is owed to the great libraries and the rich
private collections of Constantinople.
The Islāmic world
After the death of the Prophet Muḥammad in the 7th century, his followers transcribed his
teachings into the Qurʾān, a papyrus codex that quickly became the sacred scripture of the
Muslim religion. Believers were encouraged to read it and commit substantial portions to
memory. In subsequent decades, as armies of Muḥammad’s successors conquered more
territory, they took the religion of Islām and a commitment to literacy with them. The
establishment of libraries of sacred texts—especially in mosques such as al-Aqṣā in Jerusalem
(c. 634) and the Great Mosque (Umayyad Mosque) of Damascus (c. 721)—was a natural
outgrowth of their conquest. Probably drawing inspiration from the Library of Alexandria, the
first caliph of the Umayyad dynasty, Muʿāwiyah I, reorganized his personal library in the late
7th century into a prototype that his successors further improved and expanded. Caliph al-
Walīd (reigned 705–715) appointed the first so-identified ṣāhib al-maṣāhif (“curator of
books”). By that time the Umayyad collection included hundreds of works on astrology,
alchemy, medicine, and military science.
In 750 the ʿAbbāsids seized large portions of the eastern Umayyad empire (Umayyads retained
control of the Iberian Peninsula), and under the leadership of al-Manṣūr, the second ʿAbbāsid
caliph, many classical Persian and Greek works were translated into Arabic. When Muslims
shortly thereafter adopted the technique of papermaking learned from Chinese prisoners of
war, they significantly increased their capacity to reproduce the written word cheaply and thus
directly affected libraries. By the 10th century Baghdad and Córdoba (still controlled by
Umayyads) had developed the largest book markets in the world. Christian monks and
scholars were often sent to Córdoba to acquire new works.
Other noteworthy libraries of the Islāmic world include those at Baghdad (under Hārūn ar-
Rashīd), Cairo, Alexandria, and also Spain, where there was an elaborate system of public
libraries centred on Córdoba, Toledo, and Granada. Arabic works from these libraries began to
reach Western scholars in the 12th century, about the time that Greek works from
Constantinople were filtering through to the West.
The Middle Ages and the Renaissance

The role of the European monasteries
As European monastic communities were set up (from as early as the 2nd century AD), books
were found to be essential to the spiritual life. The rule laid down for observance by several
monastic orders enjoined the use of books: that of the Benedictine order, especially,
recognized the importance of reading and study, making mention of a “library” and its use
under the supervision of a precentor, one of whose duties was to issue the books and take daily
inventory of them. Scriptoria, the places where manuscripts were copied out, were a common
feature of the monasteries—again, especially in those of the Benedictine order, where there
was a strict obligation to preserve manuscripts by copying them. Many—Monte Cassino (529)
and Bobbio (614) in Italy; Luxeuil (c. 550) in France; Reichenau (724), Fulda (744), and
Corvey (822) in Germany; Canterbury (597), Wearmouth (674), and Jarrow (681) in England
—became famous for the production of copies. Rules were laid down for the use of books, and
curses invoked against any person who made off with them. Books were, however, lent to
other monasteries and even to the secular public against security. In this sense, the monasteries
to some extent performed the function of public libraries.
The contents of these monastic libraries consisted chiefly of the scriptures, the writings of the
early Church Fathers and commentaries on them, chronicles, histories such as Bede’s Historia
ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (“Ecclesiastical History of the English People”), philosophical
writings such as those of Anselm, Peter Abelard, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Roger Bacon, and
possibly some secular literature represented by the Roman poets Virgil and Horace and the
orator Cicero. After the universities were founded, beginning in the 11th century, monkish
students, on returning to their monasteries, deposited in the libraries there the lecture notes
they had made on Aristotle and Plato, on law and medicine, and so forth, and in this way
expanded the libraries’ contents.
The new learning
In Europe the libraries of the newly founded universities—along with those of the monasteries
—were the main centres for the study of books until the late Middle Ages; books were
expensive and beyond the means of all but a few wealthy people. The 13th, 14th, and 15th
centuries, however, saw the development of private book collections. Philip the Good, duke of
Burgundy, and the French kings Louis IX and Charles V (who may be looked upon as the
founder of the Bibliothèque du Roi [“King’s Library”], which later became the Bibliothèque
Nationale [“National Library”] in Paris) were great collectors, as were also such princes of the
church as Richard de Bury, bishop of Durham (d. 1345), who wrote a famous book in praise of
books, Philobiblon (The Love of Books; first printed in Cologne, 1473). But new cultural
factors—including the growth of commerce, the new learning of the Renaissance (which was
based on newly discovered classical texts), Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of a printing press
using movable type, and a substantial expansion of lay literacy—widened the circle of book
collectors to include wealthy merchants whose libraries contained herbals, books of law and
medicine, and books of hours and other devotional works. Italian humanists, such as Petrarch
and Giovanni Boccaccio, searched for and copied manuscripts of classical writings (such as
those of Cicero and Tacitus) to establish their scholarly libraries. The scholars Niccolò Niccoli
(librarian to Cosimo de’ Medici, the 14th-century ruler of Florence and a considerable patron
of the arts) and Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini shared this enthusiasm for the classics and
ransacked Europe and the Middle East for manuscripts of the writers of Greece and Rome.
Notable collections of books were made outside Italy, too (though Florence remained the
centre of the rising book trade): by Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henry II of France; by Jean
Grolier, a high French official and diplomat, who was a great patron of bookbinders; by John
Tiptoft, earl of Worcester; by Henry VII and Henry VIII of England; and by many others.
On the basis of Niccoli’s library, Cosimo de’ Medici set up the Biblioteca Marciana in
Florence in the convent of San Marco. The rich library of Lorenzo the Magnificent, grandson
of Cosimo and an even greater patron of learning and the arts, also became a public library. It
was opened in 1571 in a fine building designed by Michelangelo and still exists as the
Biblioteca Laurenziana (though in 1808 it was amalgamated with the Marciana to form the
Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana [Medicean-Laurentian Library]). Many other princely
libraries were formed at this time, including that of Matthias I (Matthias Corvinus) of Hungary
and the library of the Escorial in Madrid (founded 1557), based on the collections of Philip II.
The Vatican library also dates its foundation from this time.
Effects of the Reformation and religious wars
In England the end of the monastic libraries came in 1536–40, when the religious houses were
suppressed by Henry VIII and their treasures dispersed. No organized steps were taken to
preserve their libraries. Even more wholesale destruction came in 1550: Henry VIII and
Edward VI aligned with the “new learning” of the humanists; and university, church, and
school libraries were purged of books embodying the “old learning” of the Middle Ages. The
losses were incalculable. During Elizabeth’s reign, however, the archbishop of Canterbury,
Matthew Parker, and Elizabeth’s principal adviser, William Cecil, took the lead in seeking out
and acquiring the scattered manuscripts. Many other collectors were also active, including Sir
Robert Cotton and Sir Thomas Bodley. As a result, a considerable portion of the libraries that
had been scattered at the suppression was, by 1660, reassembled in collections—Parker’s
eventually went to Corpus Christi College at Cambridge; Cotton’s to the British Museum
library, which now forms part of the British Library; and Bodley’s to form the Bodleian
Library at Oxford.
Elsewhere in Europe, the period of the Reformation also saw many of the contents of monastic
libraries destroyed, especially in Germany and the northern countries. The Reformation leader
Martin Luther, however, did himself passionately believe in the value of libraries, and in a
letter of 1524 to all German towns he insisted that neither pains nor money should be spared in
setting up libraries. As a consequence, many town libraries in Germany, including those at
Hamburg (1529) and Augsburg (1537), date from this time. These, and the libraries of the
newly created universities (such as those of Königsberg [now Kaliningrad, Russia], Jena, and
Marburg), were partly, at any rate, built up on the basis of the old monastic collections. In
Denmark, similarly, some books from the churches and monasteries were incorporated with
the new university library, though many were destroyed.
Libraries in Germany suffered severely in the Thirty Years’ War. The Bibliotheca Palatina at
the University of Heidelberg (founded 1386), for example, was taken as the spoil of war by
Maximilian I of Bavaria, who offered it to Pope Gregory XV in 1623; and Gustavus Adolphus
sent whole libraries to Sweden, most of them to swell the library of the University of Uppsala,
which he had founded in 1620. The collections of the Royal Library in Stockholm were
similarly enriched by the war booty that fell to Sweden during the reigns of Queen Christina
and Charles X. In France, Italy, southern Germany, and Austria, where the Roman Catholic
faith remained unshaken, the old libraries remained and were supplemented by new ones set
up for educational purposes by the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits).
The Islāmic world
Like the European monastic libraries, book collections in the Islāmic countries at first were
attached to religious institutions, both mosques and madrasahs (the theological and law
schools centred on study of the Qurʾān). Scholars donated their personal collections to
mosques, which usually kept only the religious books, sometimes setting up an adjunct library
in which the books of a more secular nature were placed. These secular collections were open
to the public. Apart from the libraries associated with mosques, there were many large
collections housed in palaces and the homes of the wealthy. Notable libraries were established
by the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Maʾmūn in Baghdad in the 9th century and by the Fāṭimid caliph al-
Mustanṣir in 11th-century Cairo. Typical private and public collections usually included
regional histories and works of geography, travel, astrology, and alchemy.
17th and 18th centuries and the great national libraries
In the 17th and 18th centuries book collecting everywhere became more widespread. The
motive sometimes was sheer ostentation, but often it was genuine love of scholarship.
Throughout Europe and in North America, several fine private collections were assembled,
many of which were eventually to become the core of today’s great national and state libraries
—for this was also the period that saw the establishment of new national and university
collections.
There were, of course, other developments. In England there were established a number of
parish libraries, attached to churches and chiefly intended for the use of the clergy (one of the
earliest, at Grantham in Lincolnshire, was set up as early as 1598, and some of its original
chained books are still to be seen there). They were sometimes the result of lay donation: a
Manchester merchant, Humphrey Chetham, left money in 1653 for the foundation of parish
libraries in Bolton and Manchester and also for the establishment of a town library in
Manchester (which still exists, housed in its original bookcases, in its original building). Later,
in the 18th century, especially in England (though also elsewhere in Europe) and the United
States, there was a great vogue for the circulating and subscription libraries—societies that
provided reference service and lending collections for their members and had much influence
on the formation of popular literary taste, especially in fiction.
Library planning
The private libraries of powerful and influential collectors, such as Cardinal Mazarin in
France, were so large that a new approach to library organization was needed. The Escorial
library in Madrid, erected in 1584, had been the first to do away with the medieval book bays,
which were set at right angles to the light source, and to arrange its collection in cases lining
the walls. The old practice of chaining books to their cases was gradually abandoned; and the
change to the present arrangement, standing books with their spines facing outward, began in
France—probably with the personal library of the lawyer, councillor of state, historian, and
bibliophile Jacques-Auguste de Thou (d. 1617). Mazarin’s library was in the charge of Gabriel
Naudé, who produced the first modern treatise on library economy, Advis pour dresser une
bibliothèque (1627; Advice on Establishing a Library). This work marked the transition to the
age of modern library practice. One of its first fruits was the library of the diarist Samuel
Pepys; in the last 14 years of his life Pepys devoted much time to the organization of his
collection, and he left it to Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Naudé’s concept of a scholarly library, systematically arranged, displaying the whole of

recorded knowledge and open to all scholars, took root. It was above all absorbed by the
philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), a prominent librarian of his age, who
conceived the idea of a national bibliographical organization that would provide the scholar
with easy access to all that had been written on his subject.
Emergence of national collections
The scope of European scholarship and inquiry expanded rapidly during the 17th and 18th
centuries, especially in the field of historical studies and in philosophy. In France, de Thou,
highly qualified as a collector, was made director in 1593 of the Bibliothèque du Roi (founded
by Charles V and largely reorganized during the 15th century by Louis XII). Mazarin’s library
was scattered when he was compelled to leave France during the period of unrest known as the
Fronde, but it was reassembled when he returned to power in 1653. Rehoused in a new
building, it was opened to the public in 1691. It remained one of France’s great libraries until
after the French Revolution, when it was incorporated with other collections (including the
Bibliothèque du Roi) to form the Bibliothèque Nationale, today one of the world’s great
libraries. August, Duke von Braunschweig, established a library in 1604 that later became the
Herzog August Bibliothek at Wolfenbüttel, one of the finest libraries in Europe (Leibniz was
its librarian from 1690 to 1716). A library assembled by the elector Friedrich Wilhelm of
Brandenburg was founded in 1659 and later became the Prussian State Library. The
collections of the English book collectors Sir Hans Sloane, Sir Robert Cotton, and Edward and
Robert Harley, earls of Oxford, formed the basis of the British Museum collection (1753),
which was enlarged in 1757 by the addition of the Royal Library, containing books collected
by the kings of England from Edward IV to George II.
The effects of the French Revolution
On the continent of Europe the anticlerical movement that found expression in revolution
sealed the fate of many monastic and church libraries: those in France, for example, were
expropriated in 1789; in Germany in 1803; in Spain in 1835. In France books were collected
in the main towns of the départements in what were called dépots littéraires. In 1792 the same
fate befell the collections of aristocratic families, and these, too, were added to the dépots. The
enormous accumulations caused problems, and many books were lost, but the plan of
coordinating library resources throughout the country was carried out. The Bibliothèque
Nationale received some 300,000 volumes, and new libraries were set up in many important
provincial cities. In Bavaria the state library was greatly enriched by the contents of more than
150 confiscated libraries, and many of the provincial libraries were similarly enlarged. In
Austria, as a result of confiscations, Studienbibliotheken (study libraries) were set up at Linz,
Klagenfurt, and Salzburg, the university libraries at Graz and Innsbruck were substantially
enlarged, and many valuable acquisitions accrued to the Hofbibliothek in Vienna.
Later developments
The difficulties of library management grew in the 19th century. Libraries had increased in
size, but their growth had been haphazard; administration had become weak, standards of
service almost nonexistent; funds for acquisition tended to be inadequate; the post of librarian
was often looked on as a part-time position; and cataloging was frequently in arrears and
lacked proper method.
The university library at Göttingen was a notable exception. Johann Gesner, the first librarian,
working in close association with the curator of the university, G.A. von Münchhausen, and
proceeding on the principles laid down by Leibniz, made strenuous efforts to cover all
departments of learning; the library provided good catalogs of carefully selected literature and
was available to all as liberally as possible. The library’s next director, C.G. Heyne,
enthusiastically followed the same principles, with the result that Göttingen became the best-
organized library in the world.
A leading figure in the transformation of library service was Antonio (later Sir Anthony)
Panizzi, a political refugee from Italy who began working for the British Museum in 1831 and
was its principal librarian from 1856 to 1866. From the start he revolutionized library
administration, demonstrating that the books in a library should match its declared objectives
and showing what these objectives should be in the case of a great national library. He
perceived the importance of a good catalog and to this end elaborated a complete code of rules
for catalogers. He also saw the potential of libraries in a modern community as instruments of
study and research, available to all, and, by his planning of the British Museum reading room
and its accompanying bookstacks, showed how this potential might be realized. His ideas long
dominated library thought in the field of scholarly—or, as they are now called, research—
libraries and achieved major expression in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
By the middle of the 19th century the idea had been

 accepted that community libraries might be provided by
Reading Room of the British Museum,
designed by Sidney Smirke in local authorities at public expense. This proved a
collaboration with Anthony Panizzi and
built in the 1850s. Illustration by
significant stage in the development of library provision.
Smirke, from the Illustrated London Panizzi had stated that he wanted the facilities of a great
News, 1857.
Courtesy of the trustees of the British library to be available to poor students so that they could
Museum; photograph, J.R. Freeman &
indulge their “learned curiosity”; in England in 1850 an
Co. Ltd.
act of Parliament was passed enabling local councils to levy a rate for the provision of free
library facilities.
The paradigm for libraries and librarianship shifted radically in the 20th century with the
advent of new information technologies. By the end of the century, computer-based systems
had given individuals access to an enormous network of information. Especially in the world’s
major urban centres, the library’s traditional means of sharing access to information, such as
the owning and lending of books and other materials or the sharing of these resources with
sister libraries, were increasingly supplanted by the use of electronic databases that contained
everything from library catalogs and subject area indexes and abstracts to journal articles and
entire book-length texts. As individuals using home computers became familiar with a
worldwide electronic network, the library as a storehouse site was challenged by the so-called
virtual library, accessible by computer from any place that had telephone or cable lines. The
role of the professional librarian also evolved, as many were called upon to be familiar with
and to train others to use a variety of electronic databases.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Types of libraries
Library services available throughout the world vary so much in detail from country to country
that it is difficult to present anything but the most general picture of their activities.
Nevertheless, they follow a broad but discernible pattern that has evolved over the years.
National libraries
For a table of selected national libraries of the world, see below. In most countries there is a
national or state library or a group of libraries maintained by national resources, usually
bearing responsibility for publishing a national bibliography and for maintaining a national
bibliographic information centre. National libraries strive principally to collect and to preserve
the nation’s literature, though they try to be as international in the range of their collections as
possible.
Most national libraries receive, by legal right (known in English as legal, or copyright,
deposit), one free copy of each book and periodical printed in the country. Certain other
libraries throughout the world share this privilege, though many of them receive their legal
deposit only by requesting it.
The Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the British Library in London, and the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C., are among the most famous and most important national
libraries in the Western world. Their importance springs from the quality, size, and range of
their collections, which are comprehensive in scope, and from their attempts to maintain their
comprehensiveness. They achieve the latter quality with diminishing success in view of the
vastly increased number of publications that daily appear throughout the world, the failure of
publishers to provide legal-deposit copies, and the difficulty of ensuring adequate
representation of publications issued in the developing countries.
Bibliothèque Nationale
As indicated above, the Bibliothèque Nationale before the French Revolution was known as
the Bibliothèque du Roi and owes its origin to Charles V. During the 15th and 16th centuries it
received a number of important collections of manuscripts, and in 1617, under the
librarianship of de Thou, its right to legal deposit was reaffirmed and continued to be rigidly
enforced. In the first quarter of the 18th century, four of the library’s departments (of prints,
coins, printed books, and manuscripts) were created; it was opened to the public in 1735.
Enormous additions accrued to the library as a result of the Revolution and the confiscation of
aristocratic and church private collections. The catalog of the library on cards was completed
under the librarianship (1874–1905) of Léopold Delisle, and in 1897 he made a start to the
task of compiling a printed catalog in volume form.
The present-day Bibliothèque Nationale plays a leading

 role in the French national library service. Its Directorate
Reading room of the Bibliothèque
Nationale, Paris, by Henri Labrouste, of Libraries oversees all public libraries and participates
1860–67.
W. Rawlings/Robert Harding Picture
in the training of library professionals.
Library
The British Library
For more than two centuries the British Museum combined a great museum of antiquities with
a great comprehensive library. The library was founded in 1753 by the acceptance of the
bequest of the collections of Sir Hans Sloane, physician to King George II and president of the
Royal Society. The library was built up on the basis of two other important collections, that of
Sir Robert Cotton and that of Edward and Robert Harley, earls of Oxford; to these were added
the Royal Library, given by George II in 1757. With this collection came also the right to legal
deposit of one copy of every book published in the British Isles; this right is generally
enforced, yet many titles arrive only slowly and some not at all. These four basic collections
were notably enlarged during the first century of the library’s history by the addition of many
private collections, including the libraries of King George III (1823) and of Thomas Grenville
(1846). The library’s printed catalog, executed under the guidance of Sir Anthony Panizzi, was
issued between 1881 and 1905.
The British Museum’s library was separated from the museum under the British Library Act of
1972 and by July 1, 1973, was reorganized as the British Library Reference Division. The
British Library Lending Division was formed from the amalgamation of two previously
existing libraries: the National Central Library, which had been the centre for interlibrary
lending since 1927 and which had a collection of some 400,000 books and periodicals, mainly
in the humanities and social sciences; and the National Lending Library for Science and
Technology, which had been opened in 1962 by the Department of Scientific and Industrial
Research.
The British Library Bibliographic Services Division was formed from the British National
Bibliography Ltd., an independent organization set up in 1949 to publish a weekly catalog of
books published in the United Kingdom and received at the British Museum by legal deposit.
The British National Bibliography, as this weekly catalog was called, quickly established itself
as a foremost reference work, both for book selection and cataloging and for reference
retrieval. After the reorganization of 1973 the division expanded the computerizing of current
cataloging and the central provision of both printed cards and machine-readable entries. The
BLAISE service (British Library Automated Information Service) offers a cataloging facility
to any library wishing to participate, and the Bibliographic Services Division and its
predecessor, the British National Bibliography, cooperated closely with the U.S. Library of
Congress in the Project for Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC), which provides on-line
access to the catalogs of the current acquisitions of the British Library Reference Division and
the Library of Congress.
Library of Congress
The U.S. Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., is probably the largest national library, and
its collection of modern books is particularly extensive. It was founded in 1800 but lost many
books by fire during a bombardment of the Capitol by British troops in 1814. These losses
were to some extent made good by the purchase of Thomas Jefferson’s library shortly
thereafter. The library remained a strictly congressional library for many years, but, as the
collections were notably enlarged by purchases and by additions under the copyright acts, the
library became and remained—in effect, although not in law—the national library of the
United States. The public has access to many of the collections.
Through a service begun by Herbert Putnam, librarian

 from 1889 to 1939, the Library of Congress makes its
Library of Congress
Facade of the Library of Congress, catalog available to many thousands of subscribing
Jefferson Building, in Washington,
American libraries and institutions.
D.C., designed by the architectural
firm of Smithmeyer and Pelz and
completed in 1897. The library’s impact on librarianship has always been of
Architect of the Capitol
the highest value. Through the Library of Congress
Classification, the printed catalog cards, and MARC (see below Technical services:
Cataloging), the library’s practices are widely followed. Its last great printed product was the
754-volume National Union Catalog: Pre-1956 Imprints. In 1983 the library began producing
most of the National Union Catalog on microfiche (sheets of microfilm containing rows of
microimages of pages of printed matter). It serves as a centralized bureau for information on
the acquisition of materials worldwide and distributes cataloging data to other libraries. It also
has taken a considerable role in the areas of materials preservation and the research and
development of new methods of information storage.
Russian State Library
Of a size and importance comparable to the Library of Congress, the Russian State Library
(formerly called the Lenin Library) in Moscow is the national library of Russia. It receives
several copies of all publications from throughout the country and distributes copies to
specialist libraries. It issues printed cards for the Bibliography of Periodicals, 1917–1947 and
for a cooperative catalog that lists the holdings of the Russian State Library, the Saltykov-
Shchedrin Public Library in St. Petersburg, the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences
also in St. Petersburg, and the Central Book Office. It organizes domestic and international
lending and exchanges and offers courses of lectures for professional education and also for
readers. It formerly produced the Soviet Library–Bibliographical Classification scheme based
on a Marxist-Leninist classification of knowledge.
Other national collections


Moscow: Russian State Library There are many other national libraries with important
Patrons in a reading hall at the
collections and very long histories. The Bibliothèque
Russian State Library, Moscow.
Fred Grinberg/RIA Novosti Archive Royale Albert I in Brussels, founded in 1837 and centred
(Image #512470)
on the 15th-century collection of the dukes of Burgundy,
is the national library of Belgium and the centre of the country’s library network; it maintains
a regular lending service with the university libraries and with the large town library of
Antwerp. The Dutch Royal Library in The Hague was founded in 1798, and it, too, is the
centre of a well-developed interlibrary loan system. Because the unification of Italy in the 19th
century brought together many city-states that had major libraries, the country has a number of
national libraries, the chief being the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II in
Rome, founded in 1875, and the historically richer Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale at Florence,
founded in 1747. Other Italian national libraries are at Milan, Naples, Palermo, Turin, and
Venice. Germany was equally remarkable before World War II both for the importance of its
state or provincial libraries and for the lack of a recognized national library. The former
Preussische Staatsbibliothek was given national status in 1919. That library became East
Germany’s national library after World War II. In 1990, after the reunification of Germany, the
Deutsche Bibliothek in Frankfurt am Main was merged with the Deutsche Bücherei in Leipzig
and the Deutsche Musikarchiv to form the national library of Germany. The Austrian National
Library, founded by the emperor Maximilian I in 1493, has rich collections—notably of
manuscripts from the Austrian monasteries and from the library of Matthias I Corvinus,
dispersed after the capture of his capital, Buda, by the Turks in 1526. The National Library of
Australia in Canberra, formally created by legislation in 1960, grew out of the Commonwealth
Parliamentary Library, established in 1901.
The National Library of China in Beijing consists of the

 books and archives from imperial libraries dating to the
Parliament of Canada: Library of
Parliament Nan (Southern) Song dynasty (founded 1127). It also
The interior of the Library of
contains inscribed tortoise shells and bones, ancient
Parliament, part of the Parliament
Buildings in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. manuscripts, and block-printed volumes, as well as
© Library of Parliament (Canada)/Mone
Cheng (A Britannica Publishing Partner books from the Qing dynasty, imperial colleges, and
) private collectors. The National Diet Library (1948) in
Tokyo counts among its holdings some four million
volumes. Based on the collections of the former Imperial Library (1872), it is organized like
the U.S. Library of Congress and publishes a computer-generated national bibliography. The
National Library of India (formerly the Imperial Library) in Calcutta was founded in 1903. It
is the largest library in India and holds a fine collection of rare books and manuscripts. In
some countries, such as Iceland and Israel, the national library is combined with a university
library.
University and research libraries


National Diet Library Before the invention of printing, it was common for students to
National Diet Library, Tokyo.
663highland
travel long distances to hear famous teachers. Printing made it
possible for copies of a teacher’s lectures to be widely
disseminated, and from that point universities began to create great libraries. The Bodleian
Library (originally established in the 14th century) at Oxford University and Harvard
University Library (1638) at Cambridge, Mass., are superior to many national libraries in size
and quality. In addition to a large central library, often spoken of as the heart of a university,
there are often smaller, specialized collections in separate colleges and institutes. The
academies of science in Russia and various other former Soviet republics and those in the
countries of eastern Europe consist of groups of specialized institutes, and, while not all act as
universities in awarding degrees, their research function has the same significance. Some, as in
Hungary and Romania, serve as the national library.
In a university library many users may seek to use the same books at the same time. The
difficulty of providing multiple copies has vexed most university librarians, who must balance
slender resources against sometimes vociferous demand. To handle the problem, many
libraries have set up a short-loan collection (typically called the reserve collection) from which
books may be borrowed for as little as a few hours. The use of computers for circulation
control has brought some relief through great flexibility of operation and capacity for instant
recall of information on the whereabouts of a particular work.
The range of research carried out at a traditional university may encompass every aspect of
every discipline, and even the largest university libraries have long recognized the need for
cooperation with others, first in cataloging and later in acquisitions. Automation and
computers have helped, too, by making it possible for readers in one library to consult the
catalogs of others, as well as independent databases, indexes, and abstracts, by means of
computer networks. The printing of multiple volumes of union catalogs, especially for
periodicals, proved the value to scholars of sharing information on catalogs and collections.
Many universities have made available catalogs of their special collections and have arranged
for the reproduction both of rare individual works and of complete collections on microfilm
and in other formats. An example is the Goldsmiths’-Kress collection of early works in
economics, which combines the holdings of the Goldsmiths’ Library at the University of
London and the Kress Library at Harvard.
Public libraries
Public libraries are now acknowledged to be an indispensable part of community life as

promoters of literacy, providers of a wide range of reading for all ages, and centres for
community information services. Yet, although the practice of opening libraries to the public
has been known from ancient times, it was not without considerable opposition that the idea
became accepted, in the 19th century, that a library’s provision was a legitimate charge on
public funds. It required legislation to enable local authorities to devote funds to this cause.
Public libraries now provide well-stocked reference

 libraries and wide-ranging loan services based on
Puebla, Mexico: Palafox Library
The Palafox Library, Puebla, Mexico. systems of branch libraries. They are further
Founded in 1646 with books from the
collection of Juan de Palafox y
supplemented by traveling libraries, which serve
Mendoza, bishop of Puebla, the outlying districts. Special facilities may be provided for
Palafox is one of the oldest public
libraries in the Americas. the old, the blind, the hearing-impaired, and others, and
Ted McGrath (A Britannica Publishing
in many cases library services are organized for local
Partner )
schools, hospitals, and jails. In the case of very large
municipalities, library provision may be on a grand scale, including a reference library, which
has many of the features associated with large research libraries. The New York Public
Library, for example, has rich collections in many research fields; and the Boston Public
Library, the first of the great city public libraries in the United States (and the first to be
supported by direct public taxation), has had from the first a twofold character as a library for
scholarly research as well as for general reading. In the United Kingdom the first tax-
supported public libraries were set up in 1850; they provide a highly significant part of the
country’s total national library service. The importance of public library activities has been
recognized in many countries by legislation designed to ensure that good library services are
available to all without charge.
In many cases public libraries build up collections that

 relate to local interests, often providing information for
New York Public Library
The research room at the New York local industry and commerce. It is becoming more usual
Public Library, New York City.
Leonard G.
for public libraries to lend music scores, phonograph
records, compact discs, and, in some countries—notably
Sweden and the United Kingdom—original works of art

McKim, Charles Follen: Boston for enjoyment, against a deposit, in the home.
Public Library
The Boston Public Library's McKim
Building, designed by Charles Follen
McKim.
Not all countries provide public library services of an
© Bastos/Fotolia
equally high standard, but there has been a tendency to
  recognize their value and to improve services where they
exist or to introduce them where they do not. Public librarians work strenuously, through such
organizations as the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), for such
developments.
Special libraries
The national, university, and public libraries form the network of general libraries more or less
accessible to the general public. They take pride in special collections, which are built around
a special subject interest. Beyond this network are a large number of libraries established by
special groups of users to meet their own needs. Many of these originated with learned
societies and especially with the great scientific and engineering societies founded during the
19th century to provide specialist material for their members. Thus some special libraries were
founded independently of public libraries and before major scientific departments were
developed in national libraries; for example, the National Reference Library of Science and
Invention, now the Science Reference Library and part of the British Library, was originally
established at the U.K. Patent Office.
With the coming of the Industrial Revolution arose the need for a working class educated in
technology, and industrialists and philanthropists provided facilities and books of elementary
technical instruction. In the United Kingdom the Mechanics’ Institutes were founded in the
rapidly growing industrial towns to provide books and lectures to workers and tradesmen at
prices lower than those of the subscription libraries.
Special libraries are frequently attached to official institutions such as government

departments, hospitals, museums, and the like. For the most part, however, they come into
being in order to meet specific needs in commercial and industrial organizations. Special
libraries are planned on strictly practical lines, with activities and collections carefully
controlled in size and scope, even though these libraries may be and in fact often are large and
wide-ranging in their activities; they cooperate widely with other libraries. They are largely
concerned with communicating information to specialist users in response to—or preferably in

anticipation of—their specific needs. Special libraries have therefore been much concerned
with the theoretical investigation of information techniques, including the use of computers for
indexing and retrieval. It was in this area that the concept of a science of information flow and
transfer emerged as a new field of fundamental theoretical study. The concept underpins the
practices not only of special libraries but of all types of library and information services.
School libraries
Where public libraries and schools are provided by the same education authority, the public
library service may include a school department, which takes care of all routine procedures,
including purchasing, processing with labels, and attaching book cards and protective covers;
the books are sent to the schools ready for use. This is done in Denmark and in some parts of
the United Kingdom. In other countries—the United States, for example—processing may be
contracted out to a specialist supplier. In most countries, in fact, school and public libraries
cooperate closely.
Teachers who take an interest in the school library make a considerable contribution to its
progress, and many have acquired qualifications in librarianship, recognizing that a modern
library requires full-time attention and a variety of skills. The school librarian must have a
close knowledge of and sympathy with the work of the teaching staff. School libraries have
been the scene of significant research and experiment with many different media, so much so
that some school libraries have become resource centres. Teachers accustomed to using visual
aids, often indeed to making their own, have come to expect the library to provide such
materials as collections of photographs, slides, films and filmstrips, videotapes, and artifacts
for work in subjects such as history and mathematics. Some school librarians use the term
“realia” to describe these resources.
Private libraries
The libraries owned by private individuals are as varied in their range of interest as the
individuals who collected them, and so they do not lend themselves to generalized treatment.
The phrase private library is anyway unfortunate because it gives little idea of the public
importance such libraries may have. Private collectors are often able to collect in depth on a
subject to a degree usually impossible for a public institution; being known to booksellers and
other collectors, they are likely to be given early information about books of interest to them;
they can also give close attention to the condition of the books they buy. In these ways they
add greatly to the sum of bibliographical knowledge (especially if they make their collections
available to scholars).
Henry Clay Folger, for example, collected no fewer than 70 copies of one book—the first
collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays. (In 1932 he opened the Folger Shakespeare Library
in Washington, D.C., which had been built to house his collection.) As a result of his
collecting he added greatly to the sum of knowledge about the printing of Shakespeare’s plays
and about 17th-century printing in general. Collectors of private libraries have sometimes
benefited posterity by leaving their collections to public institutions or founding a library.
Examples in the United States include Henry E. Huntington, John Carter Brown, William L.
Clements, and J.P. Morgan. The tradition has long been established in Europe, where many
important libraries have been built up around the nucleus of a private collection.
Subscription libraries

Folger Shakespeare Library Part public, part private, these libraries enjoyed much
Folger Shakespeare Library,
popularity from the late 17th to the 19th century. Many
Washington, D.C.
Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; of them were set up by associations of scholarly
CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing
Partner ) professional groups for the benefit of academies,
colleges, and institutions, but their membership was also
open to the general public. Some of them are still in

Folger, Henry Clay existence: perhaps the most famous are the Library
Henry Clay Folger, founder of the
Folger Shakespeare Library in Company of Philadelphia, founded by Benjamin
Washington, D.C. Franklin in 1731; the Boston Athenaeum, founded in
Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library;
CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing 1807; and the London Library, opened largely at the
Partner )
request of Thomas Carlyle in 1841, which today has a
  wide-ranging collection for loan to its members in their

homes.
During the 19th century, the great size of many subscription libraries enabled them to wield
much influence over publishers and authors: Mudie’s Circulating Library, for instance,
established in London in 1842, would account for the sale of as much as 75 percent of a
popular novel’s edition. Nevertheless, these libraries were for the most part unable to survive,
and the service they gave is now largely provided by the free public libraries.
Archives
Archives are collections of papers, documents, and photographs (often unpublished or one-of-
a-kind), and sometimes other materials that are preserved for historical reasons. They are
created in the course of conducting business activities of a public or private body. Until the
mid-15th century and the use of the printing press, such records were not distinguished from
library materials and were preserved in the same places as other manuscripts. The importance
now accorded to public records has been recognized as one outcome of the French Revolution,
when for the first time an independent national system of archive administration was set up,
for whose preservation and maintenance the state was responsible and to which there was
public access.
While the administration of archives shares with libraries the basic obligation to collect, to
preserve, and to make available, it has to employ different principles and management
techniques. Libraries might be described as collecting agencies, whereas archival institutions
are receiving agencies: they do not select—their function is to preserve documents as organic
bodies of documentation. They must respect the integrity of these bodies of documents and
maintain as far as possible the order in which they were created. And, of course, the
documents need catalogs and finding aids, or guides.
A distinction has to be drawn between public and private archives. Every state, broadly
speaking, now recognizes the need to preserve its own official records and is expected to
maintain a system of archive administration, which has the function of collecting them,
preserving them, and making them publicly available after the appropriate lapse of time.
Among the best known are the Archives Nationales in France, the U.S. National Archives, and
the National Archives (formerly the Public Record Office) in the United Kingdom. Nonofficial
archives—the records of the day-to-day activities of an institution or a business—are now

recognized as having great value for socioeconomic history, and they are frequently sought by
libraries for their historical value and preserved in manuscript and similar collections. It is the
practice of many institutions, such as universities, professional and commercial organizations,
and ecclesiastical establishments, to set up their own archive departments.
Frank C. Francis Douglas John Foskett The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Citation Information
Article Title: Library
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 12 May 2017
URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/library
Access Date: February 06, 2021

BIT 2108 - Lesson 3a - Bibliothek (Library) - Britannica Online Encyclopedia

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The changing role of libraries

Increased availability of electronic information has led libraries, particularly in schools,

Greece and Alexandria

The Islāmic world

The Middle Ages and the Renaissance

The new learning

Effects of the Reformation and religious wars

The Islāmic world

17th and 18th centuries and the great national libraries

Naudé’s concept of a scholarly library, systematically arranged, displaying the whole of

Emergence of national collections

The effects of the French Revolution

By the middle of the 19th century the idea had been

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

The present-day Bibliothèque Nationale plays a leading

The British Library

Through a service begun by Herbert Putnam, librarian

Russian State Library

Other national collections

The National Library of China in Beijing consists of the

University and research libraries

Public libraries are now acknowledged to be an indispensable part of community life as

Public libraries now provide well-stocked reference

In many cases public libraries build up collections that

Special libraries are frequently attached to official institutions such as government

concerned with communicating information to specialist users in response to—or preferably in

  wide-ranging collection for loan to its members in their

archives—the records of the day-to-day activities of an institution or a business—are now

Frank C. Francis Douglas John Foskett The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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