library

/luy"brer'ee, -breuh ree, -bree/, n., pl. libraries.

1. a place set apart to contain books, periodicals, and other material for reading, viewing, listening, study, or reference, as a room, set of rooms, or building where books may be read or borrowed.

2. a public body organizing and maintaining such an establishment.

3. a collection of manuscripts, publications, and other materials for reading, viewing, listening, study, or reference.

4. a collection of any materials for study and enjoyment, as films, musical recordings, or maps.

5. a commercial establishment lending books for a fixed charge; a lending library.

6. a series of books of similar character or alike in size, binding, etc., issued by a single publishing house.

7. Biol. a collection of standard materials or formulations by which specimens are identified.

8. canon¹ (def. 9).

9. Computers. a collection of software or data usually reflecting a specific theme or application.

[1300-50; ME libraire < MF librairie < ML libraria, n. use of fem. of L librarius (adj.) of books, equiv. to lib(e)r book + -arius -ARY]

Pronunciation. LIBRARY, with one r-sound following close upon another, is particularly vulnerable to the process of dissimilation - the tendency for neighboring like sounds to become unlike, or for one of them to disappear altogether. The pronunciation /luy"brer ee/, therefore, while still the most common, is frequently reduced by educated speakers, both in the U.S. and in England, to the dissimilated /luy"beuh ree/ or /luy"bree/. A third dissimilated form /luy"ber ee/ is more likely to be heard from less educated or very young speakers, and is often criticized. See colonel, February, governor.

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I

Collection of information resources in print or in other forms that is organized and made accessible for reading or study.

The word derives from the Latin liber ("book"). The origin of libraries lies in the keeping of written records, a practice that dates at least to the 3rd millennium BC in Babylonia. The first libraries as repositories of books were those of the Greek temples and those established in conjunction with the Greek schools of philosophy in the 4th century BC. Today's libraries frequently contain periodicals, microfilms, tapes, videos, compact discs, and other materials in addition to books. The growth of on-line communications networks has enabled library users to search electronically linked databases worldwide. See also library science.

II

(as used in expressions)

Alexandria Library of

Bodleian Library

British Library

library classification

Library of Congress

Library of Congress Classification

library science

New York Public Library

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Introduction

      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, 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 (Amarna, Tell el-) 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 (Shihuangdi), a member of the Ch'in dynasty (Qin 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 (ancient Greek civilization) 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 (Alexandria, Library of), 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 (Alexandrian Museum), 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 (ancient 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 (Lucullus, Lucius Licinius), 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 (Caesar, Julius) planned a public library and entrusted the implementation of his plans to an outstanding scholar and writer, Marcus Terentius Varro (Varro, Marcus Terentius), 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 (Pollio, Gaius Asinius). 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 (Byzantine Empire)

      In the East the library tradition was picked up at Constantinople (Istanbul). 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 (Justinian I), 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 (Islāmic world) 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 (Damascus, Great Mosque of)) 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 (Walīd, al-) (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 (Abbāsid Dynastyʿ) seized large portions of the eastern Umayyad empire (Umayyads retained control of the Iberian Peninsula), and under the leadership of al-Manṣūr (Manṣūr, al-), 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 (monastery)

      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 (scriptorium), 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 (university) 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 (book collecting) 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 (Philip III), 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 (Bury, Richard de), 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 (Italy) humanists, such as Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio (Boccaccio, Giovanni), searched for and copied manuscripts of classical writings (such as those of Cicero and Tacitus) to establish their scholarly libraries. The scholars Niccolò Niccoli (Niccoli, Niccolò) (librarian to Cosimo de' Medici, the 14th-century ruler of Florence and a considerable patron of the arts) and Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini (Poggio Bracciolini, Gian Francesco) 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 (Medici, Cosimo de') set up the Biblioteca Marciana in Florence in the convent of San Marco. The rich library of Lorenzo the Magnificent (Medici, Lorenzo de'), 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] (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 (Parker, Matthew), and Elizabeth's principal adviser, William Cecil (Cecil, William, 1st Baron Burghley), 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 (Luther, Martin), 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 (Islāmic world) 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 (Mazarin, Jules, Cardinal) 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 (Thou, Jacques-Auguste de) (d. 1617). Mazarin's library was in the charge of Gabriel Naudé (Naudé, Gabriel), 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 (Pepys, Samuel); 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 (Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm) (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 (Bibliothèque Nationale de France), 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 (Göttingen, University of) 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 (Panizzi, Sir Anthony), a political refugee from Italy who began working for the British (British Library) 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 local authorities at public expense. This proved a significant stage in the development of library provision. Panizzi had stated that he wanted the facilities of a great library to be available to poor students so that they could indulge their “learned curiosity”; in England in 1850 an 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.

Ed.

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

      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 bibliographical 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 (Bibliothèque Nationale de France)

      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; 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 of Libraries oversees all public libraries and participates in the training of library professionals.

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 (Sloane, Sir Hans, Baronet), 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 (Cotton, Sir Robert Bruce, 1st Baronet) 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 (Congress, Library of).

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 catalog available to many thousands of subscribing American libraries and institutions.

      The library's impact on librarianship has always been of the highest value. Through the Library of Congress Classification, the printed catalog cards, and MARC (see below Technical services: Cataloging (library)), 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

      There are many other national libraries with important collections and very long histories. The Bibliothèque Royale Albert I in Brussels, founded in 1837 and centred 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 Peking consists of the books and archives from imperial libraries dating to the Southern Sung dynasty (founded 1127). It also contains inscribed tortoise shells and bones, ancient manuscripts, and block-printed volumes, as well as books from the Ch'ing 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

      Before the invention of printing, it was common for students to 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 systems of branch libraries. They are further supplemented by traveling libraries, which serve outlying districts. Special facilities may be provided for the old, the blind, the hearing-impaired, and others, and in many cases library services are organized for local 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 local industry and commerce. It is becoming more usual 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 for enjoyment, against a deposit, in the home.

      Not all countries provide public library services of an 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 (mechanics' institute) 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 (book collecting) 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 (Folger, Henry Clay), 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

      Part public, part private, these libraries enjoyed much popularity from the late 17th to the 19th century. Many of them were set up by associations of scholarly 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 existence: perhaps the most famous are the Library Company of Philadelphia, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731; the Boston Athenaeum (Boston Athenæum), founded in 1807; and the London Library, opened largely at the 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 British Public Record Office. 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.

Sir Frank C. Francis Douglas John Foskett Ed.

The library (library science) operation

Training and library management

      Throughout the centuries, librarians have preserved books and records from the hazards of war, fire, and flood, and it is no idle boast to say that they have played a large part in maintaining the cultural heritage of their countries. Although the traditional librarian acted primarily as a keeper of records, the concept of an active service of advice and information eventually appeared as a legitimate extension of the role of custodian.

      The rise of scientific and industrial research and the establishment of public libraries in the 19th century led to the greatly increased emphasis on the subject approach and the role of systematic cataloging and classification in addition to the accepted function of building the collection and the consequent need for expert knowledge of bibliography, both systematic and analytic. In the industrial library in particular, the information officer was almost entirely concerned with the information contained on documents and was indifferent to their form; in this scheme a scrap of paper recording an important telephone call would have more significance than an incunabulum (a book printed before 1501). The proliferation of different forms of record eventually led to a much wider view of information storage and retrieval methods, often requiring the intervention of subject specialists who understood the work of their specialist colleagues.

The professional librarian

      Now sometimes known as information specialists, librarians often specialize in certain areas. Their professional skills range from those of the archivist, who is concerned with records management, records appraisal, accessioning and arrangement, archival buildings and storage facilities, preservation and rehabilitation, and reference services (including exhibition and publication), to those of the information scientist, who is concerned with research on the nature of information itself and the process of information flow and transfer between individuals and communities. The various branches of the information profession share many objectives, practices, and skills. Each branch works to make the records of human progress readily available, and the contribution of each to society can only suffer from the lack of integration into a larger whole.

      The personnel requirements of the profession include several categories, based on various kinds of specialist knowledge and skills. These include a knowledge of the nature of documents and their role in collection building, skills in the organization of knowledge through cataloging and classification, an ability to analyze and survey needs and to disseminate information in response to and in advance of inquiries, and, often, a high level of computer literacy. Support personnel are needed to maintain the equipment, both hardware and software, and clerks, technicians, and stewards also are essential.

Training institutes

      Most of the initiatives for the education and training of professionals have come from librarians or their professional associations. In the United States the first university school for librarians was established in 1887 by Melvil Dewey at Columbia University. The American Library Association (ALA) pursued a policy of accreditation in an effort to ensure that library schools offering a professional qualification meet the standards established by the profession itself. The first British library school was established in University College, London, in 1919, and until 1946 all other qualifications were gained through public examinations that were conducted by the Library Association. Today there are many other schools, most in polytechnic institutes, where the Library Association's own standards continue to influence the curriculum. The association's successive syllabi have had considerable importance for countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, and the Caribbean states.

      In continental Europe most professional education takes place in universities and similar institutions of higher learning. The University of Budapest (now Loránd Eötvös University) in Hungary began courses in the Faculty of Philosophy in 1949, and in 1964 a senior-level course in documentation was organized jointly by the university's Chair of Library Science and the National Technical Library and Documentation Centre. In the Czech Republic, library and information science courses are given at the Chair of Library Science and Scientific Information in Charles University. Slovakia's library courses are taught by the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of Comenius University in Bratislava. In France the long-established École Nationale des Chartes, which mainly trains archivists, also prepares students for the public, national, and university libraries. The École Nationale Supérieure des Bibliothèques belongs to the Direction des Bibliothèques, and the École de Bibliothécaires-Documentalistes is a private institution of the Institut Catholique de Paris.

      China's Peking and Wu-han universities have advanced courses and research programs in librarianship, and professional qualifications may also be gained by correspondence. In 1985, with the help of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the British Council, a master's degree course in information studies was begun at the Institute for Scientific and Technical Information in China.

      Training once weighted heavily toward historical and bibliographic aspects of library management has since been balanced with more emphasis on scientific literature, indexing and abstracting techniques, and information technology. Much more research effort is now directed also to the theory of information transfer and the development of mathematical models for this and to other aspects of management in library and information services.

Library materials

Types of materials

Ancient materials

      Historically libraries have depended on what materials were available to build collections. The evolution of libraries in antiquity involved the search for a material durable enough to survive as a permanent record and relatively easy to use. Clay and stone provided permanence, but inscribing the records required considerable labour. Palm leaves, bamboo strips, and papyrus offered a flat surface that more readily accepted handwriting, and it was said that parchment came into use in Asia Minor after the export of papyrus from Egypt was banned. In AD 105 the invention of paper was announced by Ts'ai Lun (Cai Lun) to the Chinese emperor Ho-ti, and the British Museum has a paper fragment dated about 137. The use of paper spread slowly, however, and most of the oldest surviving manuscripts are of other materials, particularly vellum (fine-grained lambskin, kidskin, or calfskin).

      Samples of ancient writing are rare and therefore are highly valued, and national and other scholarly libraries collect and preserve them as part of their responsibility to the preservation of history and the advancement of learning. Most universities have collections of rare books. Eton College, for example, has a fine collection of incunabula, some of which were purchased when they were first printed. A Gutenberg Bible is one of its finest examples. Some, such as the Duke Humphrey Library in the Bodleian at Oxford and the Beinecke Library at Yale University, contain collections of manuscripts, and wealthy private collectors have established world-famous institutions such as the Henry E. Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., and the Cotton and Harley collections in the British Library Reference Division.

Photographs

      The invention of photography in the 19th century made possible a new kind of record, and collections of photographs are popular, particularly in public libraries with an interest in local history. Specialized photo libraries, such as the BBC Hulton Picture Library, are regularly used to provide illustrative material for film and television programs.

      For the general use of libraries, however, microphotography has played a much more important role. Many leading newspapers and periodicals have reproduced their entire sets of back issues on roll film, which offers a considerable saving of space and makes it feasible for even a small library to house an entire set. The disadvantage of roll film is that the user must start searching the roll film from the beginning of the reel, no matter where the relevant pages may be on the reel. A considerable advance was achieved by the invention of the transparent Microcard, or microfiche. This is a piece of film cut to a specified size and shape usually approximating a library catalog card but available in more than one size (although the most favoured size is 5 by 3 inches [8 by 13 centimetres]). The microfiche offers the advantage of random access; that is, instead of starting at the beginning, the user can bring any section of the microfiche directly into view on the screen. Microfiche also are more convenient to store and handle, and they have become very popular for the production of catalogs and bibliographies as well as for reproduction of texts.

Audiovisual (audiovisual education) materials

      There are various forms of audiovisual media. The most common in libraries is the audio recording on disc or tape, and most libraries, especially public and school libraries, have built up extensive collections of nonbook materials, from the recordings of symphony orchestras on long-playing records or compact discs to tape-recorded oral history interviews. Videotape loans are also available from many libraries. Cooperation among school and public libraries in this field has made a considerable contribution to local history. The importance attached to these media, particularly in schools, is indicated by the use of the name resource centre for what was formerly called the school library. When teachers are eager to use audiovisual materials, they are often also eager to create materials, and this enthusiasm can enable school librarians to build up a strong and productive relationship between the library and the teaching program.

Magnetic (magnetic recording) materials

      Newer articles requiring library storage include the machine-readable magnetic tape and disc. These need such specialized treatment, for the safeguarding of their contents from accidental erasure, that most computer centres employ their own specialist librarian. Like roll film, magnetic tapes and discs do not readily yield information about their contents and therefore require particular care in labeling and indexing as well as equipment and programming to permit retrieval.

Access to materials

      Two types of documents, indexes and abstracts, contain catalogs and bibliographies of original materials. Indexes include any of countless bibliographies of currently published material, usually of articles in periodicals. Sometimes libraries have taken the initiative to create these finding aids for journal articles. For example, the U.S. National Library of Medicine has produced Index Medicus, a monthly listing of current articles from some 3,500 biomedical journals throughout the world. In other cases, scientific societies have taken the initiative. Early in the 20th century, the American Chemical Society began to prepare indexes and abstracts to help chemists obtain information about the literature in their field, and the Institute of Physics in the United Kingdom took a similar responsibility for physics. The long series of indexes published by the H.W. Wilson Company of New York City and covering many different fields is well known and widely used in other countries, though their coverage is mainly limited to American publications. This national focus has resulted in similar efforts in other countries, such as the Current Technology Index (British) and the British Education Index.

      Since the 1960s many indexes and abstracts have become available electronically. In subject areas having a low level of user demand, libraries can obtain information about journal articles by connecting their computers to those of database vendors. In areas of higher demand, libraries can buy the electronic form of indexes and abstracts on CD-ROM (compact disc read-only memory). These small discs, which are identical in appearance to those used to record music, can replace several volumes of an index or abstracting service. In areas of the highest user demand, libraries can purchase the electronic indexes and abstracts on magnetic discs or tape and enter this information about journal and magazine articles into the same computer that contains the library catalog information. In this way, the OPAC (on-line public access catalog) can be extended to include information about both books and journal articles. One major advantage of electronic indexes and abstracts is that they enable users to search for information using words from titles and abstracts in addition to the author and subject access provided in print versions. This expands significantly the number of paths by which people can find information.

      Abstracts, which are summaries of documents that indicate contents as well as authors and titles, have a history that dates to at least 1682, when the Weekly Memorials for the Ingenious was published in London. The British Librarian of 1737 published abstracts of well-known and useful books and claimed to cover all the sciences “in a manner never before attempted.”

Technical services

      One of two major functions of libraries, technical services include processes for acquiring, arranging, indexing, and storing the collection.

Acquisition and supply

Criteria for selection

      The output of published materials, in all forms, is so vast that no single library, not even the largest, can hope to acquire everything; even in relatively specialized fields, some selection has become necessary, and most libraries have an explicit selection policy. The basic principles of selection vary little among different types of libraries, inasmuch as they derive directly from the known interests of the users. Practice is another matter and varies according to the types of user. A national library aims to hold at least one copy of all the publications of its own country and to have a good representation of foreign works, many of which may be obtained through exchange agreements with other national libraries. University, college, and school libraries relate their choice of acquisitions to the programs of teaching and research in their institutions; the academic level of the material naturally varies according to the level of the student population. An elementary school will hold a good selection of books written for children, but a university will tend not to. Many university libraries try to maintain a relatively complete coverage of the reports issued by government and other research establishments. Some universities are designated as repositories for the reports issued by intergovernmental agencies, such as the United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the European Union.

      An important aspect of selection is learning about new publications that would enhance the library. Various surveys have been made of the ways in which specialists gain new information about their fields of work, and the most popular usually turns out to be informal discussions with colleagues. But this is by nature a haphazard process, and most countries now have, or aim to have, a national bibliography based on the acquisitions of the national library. The British National Bibliography, begun in 1950 at the British Museum, is a leading example: it is published weekly, with regular cumulations for easy access over long periods. It is a tool for subject inquiry searches as well as for current selection.

      The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions has established a program to increase the range and number of such bibliographic tools. The program, called Universal Bibliographic Control and International MARC, aims to encourage national libraries, or groups of libraries, to institute methods of recording their national publications in a standard format and, wherever possible, of entering them into computer files. This program is accompanied by two additional programs, the Universal Availability of Publication and Universal Dataflow and Telecommunications, which aim to provide the necessary follow-up service of document delivery.

      Other aids to the selection of material for acquisition are legion. Many libraries join professional societies and institutions to obtain their publications, which usually contain lists and reviews of new work relevant to their subjects. Leading journals, such as The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, Nature, and Science, contain reviews by experts, advertisements for new and forthcoming publications, and review articles covering important new books in special fields.

Acquisition systems

      The development of electronic means of document delivery is unlikely to supplant the more traditional sources of supply, the publishing and bookselling trades. Some companies combine the two functions. Purchases by libraries have traditionally generated much of the revenue of local bookshops, but firms operating as specialist library suppliers are able to offer many auxiliary services, such as attaching plastic covers and inserting labels of ownership, because they deal in large-scale bulk supply and can afford to maintain machines for such processes.

      The acquisition systems described above are found mostly in countries with long-established traditions of reading, research, libraries, and book trade. Far greater difficulties confront the library services in the developing countries, particularly in Africa and Asia. Even in India and China, with their long history of using books, a steady and satisfactory progress is hindered by shortages of finance, materials, and trained staff. Some universities in these nations have large libraries and receive grants that enable them to acquire foreign as well as national publications, but they often meet with delays caused by administrative procedures, shortage of foreign currencies, and problems of language in the postal services. In most African countries, growth of a national literature is hampered by the centuries-old prevalence of an oral tradition and by the cost of importing even such basic materials as paper.

      Many countries in eastern Europe as well as in the Third World look to exchanges as a means of obtaining materials. Some governments allow libraries to exchange duplicate copies of national publications, as a recognized method of compensation without payment in foreign currency. The practice does present certain administrative problems, but it is a useful means of encouraging the international flow of publications as well as of giving practical help in collection building to libraries in countries with limited resources.

Cataloging

      However careful and scholarly the methods used in building a collection, without expert guidance to its access and use, the collection remains difficult to approach. Cataloging and classification, well-tried disciplines often combined under the general heading of “indexing,” provide the needed guidance. Both techniques have been in use as long as libraries have existed, and their value in the so-called information age has been enhanced by the use of computers.

      The function of the catalog is to identify all the items in a collection and to group like items together. All the great libraries of the ancient world seem to have had lists and inventories, whether kept on clay, stone, papyrus, parchment, palm leaves, or bamboo strips. Examples may be found in museums throughout the world.

Cataloging by author and subject

      For many centuries the feature that gave a work its unique identity was the name of the writer, and users of the library were expected to know the names of the authors whose works they wished to consult. This system was eventually supplemented by the development of a subject catalog.

      Many factors have contributed to the rise in importance of the subject approach to information. From the earliest times, librarians recognized that readers would be greatly helped if the catalog entries were arranged in groups of related subjects. General classifications of knowledge such as those of Aristotle and Porphyry, scholarly curricula such as the trivium and quadrivium (expounded by Julius Caesar's librarian Marcus Terentius Varro and persisting as a major influence on Western education), and practical considerations, such as the governmental needs of emperors and priests, all have formed the basis for the arrangement of subject catalogs. Early in the 7th century the scholar Wei Cheng wrote the bibliographic section of the official Sui Dynasty History, dividing the books into four categories: Confucian classics, historical records, philosophical writings, and miscellaneous works.

      Since the late 19th century far more attention has been paid to cataloging the subject contents of books as well as the names of their authors. Most of the impetus for this change came from science and technology, where the practice of working in teams in research institutions largely superseded the practice of single individuals, such as Charles Darwin, working for years to complete their research and then publishing the results as a book. The proliferation of specialist journals that publish short papers charting the progress of teamwork has meant that the names of single authors have become somewhat less important as tools for identifying works in libraries. Catalogs that list the subjects of research are more useful to specialists in related fields around the world, who may not know researchers by name but wish to have access to their work.

Catalog systems

      Despite a steady, if slow, trend toward standardization, various forms of catalog continue to exist. Sets of entries generally are arranged in one of three catalog systems. The first is the dictionary catalog, in which author, title, subject, and any other entries are filed in a single alphabetical sequence. This form is popular in the United States and in public libraries generally and probably presents the least amount of difficulty for the general or casual reader. The second is the divided catalog, still in alphabetical sequence but with subject entries in a separate file. This form has increased in popularity, and many libraries have divided their former dictionary catalogs, recognizing the growing value of the subject approach. The third is the classed, or classified, catalog, which is more popular in Britain and continental Europe and in some developing countries whose librarians trained there. In the classed catalog, as its name suggests, all the entries are filed in the sequence of a classification scheme—that is, in a systematic order of subjects—but separate alphabetical files link names of authors and of subjects to the notation symbols of the classification scheme used in the main file. The chief advantage of a classed catalog is that the entries are related subjects grouped together in the file; thus, a subject search can be made much more simply than in a catalog based on the alphabet. In addition, when different languages are used, the sequence of entries in a classed catalog does not alter, as is the case with the dictionary.

Vehicles for catalogs

      The types of catalog differ on the basis of the information provided in the entries, but the actual physical form may also vary. Originally, catalogs took the same form as the books they listed; being made of the same material, the catalog was an extra item of the collection itself. The earliest catalogs of the great national and scholarly libraries were in book form, with handwritten entries and spaces for new additions. The main problem of the book-type catalog, of course, was the insertion of entries for new acquisitions. Most plans, like that of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, made no attempt to add to the printed file and instead placed vain hopes in the prospect of new editions.

      The initial solution to this problem was the creation of a card catalog, each entry having its own card and each card containing only one entry. In principle, such catalogs can grow in size indefinitely; any new entry can be filed between any two existing entries. Thus the catalog offers the opportunity to have a completely up-to-date file: an entry can be made in the catalog immediately after a book has been purchased.

      In 1901 the Library of Congress began offering copies of its own catalog cards for sale to other libraries. For many years this proved of inestimable value, particularly to small libraries unable to afford skilled catalogers. The service was also intended to serve as a central cataloging agency. Many eminent librarians, in conferences and in published papers, had lamented what they argued was wasteful duplication of effort involved in the separate cataloging of the same books in many different libraries. They proposed that a central agency undertake the task and make the results generally available, so that any library could use the central catalog thus produced to complete its own highly professional catalog. In the 1950s the British National Bibliography also began to produce cards from the entries in its weekly lists.

      These and similar schemes in other countries in Europe achieved a certain success but for various reasons could not be said to have provided the ultimate solution. The advent of the computerized catalog, however, offers a more practicable approach because the storage capacity and the operating speed of even small machines overcome the main drawbacks to card services: delays in production and the labour of filing the cards when they arrive. Computer technology makes it possible for the details of any document to be entered into a file at any point and then to be transmitted to a central data file from which other libraries can obtain details by means of telecommunications links. The process is demonstrated by the revised Machine-Readable Cataloging Project, known since its revision in 1968 as MARC II. Library users find no difficulty in consulting such on-line catalogs, and many prefer them to the more cumbersome, if more familiar, form of cards in drawers. Not only do they enable library patrons to search for books containing a particular word or combination of works in the title, but the patron also can narrow a subject search by finding books that are on two or more topics. The information from the catalog can be alphabetized or put in order by year of publication and printed out as a book list.

      The system that accommodates this type of search is known as OPAC (on-line public access computer). Further development of this system has made it possible to integrate other library records with the OPAC, so that patrons can reserve materials that are still on order and can determine if items in the library's collection are already on loan. The OPAC has been expanded in many libraries to include information about journal articles and sometimes about the community served by the library. The job of cataloger, once highly dedicated to the task of describing library materials for the production of a catalog, is now focused on producing an information retrieval tool that will be of general use to the library's patrons.

Catalog standardization

      The ideal of centralized cataloging led to increased interest in standardized forms of entry. As libraries grew larger after the Renaissance, it became necessary to devise some form of standard to ensure consistency among several catalogs. Perhaps the most famous, the British Museum Rules, was inspired by Sir Anthony Panizzi and has influenced all succeeding codes, though most of them have departed considerably from the original. The Vatican Rules and the Prussian Instructions have both been subject to commissions for revision, but certainly the most influential code is the Anglo-American Catalog Rules; Author and Title Entries, first published in 1908 and revised in 1967. A further revision was published in 1978 as Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, second edition; it is commonly referred to as AACR2.

      Many other discussions, revisions, and simplifications have taken place since the mid-20th century. Short versions of the major codes were published for small libraries in certain countries; the public instruction ministry in Italy issued new rules; a French commission on cataloging issued standards for anonymous works; and in the former Soviet Union, proposals were published for standardizing the transcription of Chinese names into Cyrillic script.

      All these codes dealt with the use and entering of a consistent form of the names of authors, including Anonymous in the case of anonymous works, and sometimes, as in AACR2, with titles. A separate set of codes for subject cataloging emerged mainly in the United States. These subject headings took the form of lists of subject headings, the three best known being the list compiled by Minnie E. Sears, the Library of Congress Subject Headings, and the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Thesauri

      A new use of the term thesaurus, now widespread, dates from the early 1950s in the work of H.P. Luhn, at International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), who was searching for a computer process that could create a list of authorized terms for the indexing of scientific literature. The list was to include a structure of cross-references between families of notions, in the manner of P.M. Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (1852) and similar to the structure of faceted classification schemes. A major thesaurus, and one of the earliest, is the Thesaurofacet (1969), a list of engineering terms in great detail designed by Jean Aitchison for the English Electric Company. The thesaurus has proved very useful both for indexing and for searching in machine systems. It is especially helpful in such areas as medicine, aerospace, and other scientific and technical fields.

      Thesauri depend upon the concept of controlled vocabulary, subject headings organized into lists that help users locate the appropriate heading for their topic of interest and find related terms used for narrower or broader topics. One of the functions of controlled vocabulary is to select from what may be a large group of synonyms the one term that most accurately describes a topic. When libraries use that one term consistently, their users will know where to look to find materials on any topic of interest. Books on travel in Britain, for example, might be described as travel, tourism, or sightseeing in Britain, Great Britain, or the United Kingdom. By selecting one expression of this topic—for example, “Great Britain — Description and Travel”—a library ensures that all of the books on the topic will be grouped under one subject heading in the catalog.

      The disadvantage of controlled vocabulary systems such as subject headings lists is that they are slow to evolve. New topics and new ways of thinking and talking about topics continually evolve, and, although there are ongoing efforts to keep controlled vocabulary lists as up-to-date as possible, they inevitably lag behind ordinary language usage. As a result, some topics may be difficult to find using the subject heading approach. For this reason, many library systems, particularly those that use computerized information retrieval techniques, combine controlled vocabulary such as subject headings with free vocabulary: descriptions of the topic of books or other materials using ordinary language. In these systems, subject headings are supplemented with topic descriptions such as abstracts and summaries, which have no restrictions on descriptive vocabulary.

Classification

      While catalogs aim to identify and list items in a collection, schemes of classification (library classification) have a more general application in arranging documents in a sequence that will make sense and be helpful to the user. Because they display subjects, and not documents, they can be used in several libraries, and some indeed have found applications in many different countries. Like schemes for grouping entries in catalogs, classifications—whether of knowledge based on philosophical principles, of the subject faculties of universities, or of the pragmatic grouping of books on shelves—have formed the basis of many individual systems.

The Dewey Decimal system

      The best known of all schemes for the classification of documents in libraries is the Dewey Decimal Classification, devised by Melvil Dewey (Dewey, Melvil) in 1873 and published in 1876. Apart from being the first modern classification scheme for libraries, the Dewey system embodies two of Dewey's many contributions to the theory and practice of librarianship. First, he recognized that a systematic arrangement of books on shelves should make sense to the users; his scheme therefore reflected the dominant pattern of current thinking, exemplified by the “classificatory sciences.” And second, he used decimals as notation symbols, which illustrated the way in which subjects were divided hierarchically, from main classes to specific topics. An example from the schedule for chemistry shows how numbers are subdivided:

● 540chemistry and allied sciences

● 541physical and theoretical chemistry

● 541.2theoretical chemistry

● 541.3physical chemistry

● 541.34solutions

● 541.35photochemistry

● 542laboratories, apparatus, equipment

      Another feature of the Dewey system is the mnemonics used for certain types of subdivisions. Thus, many subjects can be subdivided geographically by the use of the historical-geographic number as decimals:

● 900general geography and history

● 970history of North America

● 973history of the United States

      Combining with the art schedule, the number for history of art in the United States is obtained:

● 700the arts

● 709history of art

● 709.73history of art in the United States

      The Dewey Decimal system and the Library of Congress system, mentioned below, are the classification schemes most frequently used in North American libraries.

The Universal Decimal system

      The Universal Decimal Classification, published in 1905 and preferred by scientific and technical libraries, was an immediate offspring of the Dewey system. Paul Otlet (Otlet, Paul) and Henri-Marie Lafontaine (Lafontaine, Henri-Marie) adapted the Dewey system as the basis for a much more detailed scheme suitable for use in a vast card index of books and periodical articles in classified order—a universal bibliography of recorded knowledge. While retaining the basic generic hierarchies, the Universal Decimal Classification makes far greater use of the technique of synthesis, by providing a series of auxiliary tables for aspects of subjects likely to appear in several parts of the main schedules. These tables are indicated by the use of symbols such as punctuation marks. The colon sign (:) indicates a relationship between any parts and is the most commonly used sign. The numeral 669.1 being the notation for iron and steel and 546.22 for sulfur, the compound subject can be indicated by the notation 669.1:546.22, sulfur in iron and steel.

      Like the Dewey Decimal Classification, the Universal Decimal Classification has been translated into many languages, and it is in use in many European and Asian libraries. European libraries, in particular, have emphasized classification systems over subject heading systems, basing their subject catalogs on the classification system, with an alphabetic index to class numbers. The revision of the Universal Decimal Classification has become a responsibility of the International Federation for Information and Documentation (Fédération Internationale d'Information et de Documentation; FID).

The Library of Congress (Library of Congress Classification) system

      At the turn of the 20th century Herbert Putnam (Putnam, Herbert), the Librarian of Congress, decided to reclassify the library but rejected the Dewey system. His staff adopted a more pragmatic approach based entirely on the way in which the books were arranged in their subjects on the shelves. They also rejected the decimal notation, preferring a purely ordinal system combining letters and numbers, leaving blank spaces where they expected new subjects to develop. (Not all of their expectations have proved correct.) American libraries and some scholarly libraries elsewhere have found the scheme attractive for its depth of detail, inasmuch as it is based on a very large library. An additional advantage is that Library of Congress notations appear on the library's catalog cards and on computer tapes produced by the MARC project. It uses both alphabet letters and numbers for its classification codes.

The Bliss system

      Although not widely used, the bibliographic classification (Bliss Classification) system invented by Henry E. Bliss of the College of the City of New York (published in 1935 as A System of Bibliographic Classification) has made important contributions to the theory of classification, particularly in Bliss's acute perception of the role of synthesis and his insistence that a library scheme should reflect the organization of knowledge and the system of the sciences. His systematic auxiliary schedules, designed to achieve what he called composite specification, carry the synthetic principle into every subject area and give a far higher degree of flexibility than does a purely enumerative scheme such as the Library of Congress system. The Bliss Classification Association, founded in the United Kingdom in 1967, promotes the use and development of the Bliss classification scheme.

The Colon (Colon Classification) system

      Perhaps the most important advance in classification theory has been made by the Indian librarian S.R. Ranganathan (Ranganathan, Shiyali Ramamrita), whose extraordinary output of books and articles has left its mark on the entire range of studies from archival science to information science. He introduced the term facet analysis to denote the technique of dividing a complex subject into its several parts by relating them to a set of five fundamental categories of abstract notions, which he called personality, energy, matter, space, and time. He employed these in his Colon Classification system (1933), which is used in some Indian libraries but has found few followers elsewhere. Nevertheless, the ideas in the scheme, expounded in his Colon Classification (1933) and Prolegomena to Library Classification (1937), have influenced all later work in classification theory and practice, including subsequent editions of the Dewey, Universal, and Bliss systems.

The Marxist system

      In China a scheme has been published that departs somewhat from the Anglo-American traditions and claims to reflect the structure of knowledge according to the principles of Marxist philosophy (Marxism). It has an enumerative structure and may be distinguished by its detail of analysis of, and dependence on, the corpus of Marxist literature—a literature that, in Anglo-American schemes, usually occupies a relatively minor place.

Preservation

      One model of library service is that collections are used so extensively that the materials disintegrate from heavy use. Librarians who espouse this ideal maintain that libraries are for use and that any materials not in active use should be removed from the collection, a process known as weeding. A competing model holds that much of the world's great literature is available to be read chiefly because libraries of the past preserved that literature. This model encourages the preservation of materials so that the intellectual and cultural heritage received and created by the current generation can be transmitted to future generations.

      Libraries most active in the area of preservation are usually large research libraries, which have the largest collections and perhaps the greatest concern for future users. On the whole most libraries try to strike a balance between maximizing current use and preserving materials for future use. In recent decades, the move toward preservation of library materials has been given additional impetus by the discovery that much 19th- and 20th-century paper retains acid introduced in the manufacturing process and that this acid, combined with the effects of air pollution, is causing many books to disintegrate as they sit on library shelves.

Reformatting

      In response to this problem, libraries have developed several preservation strategies. The most important method of preserving library materials has been reformatting. Brittle and crumbling books and photographs are preserved by photographing them on microfilm or, in some cases, by using scanners to create digital images on magnetic or optical disc. These less vulnerable formats can then be preserved in archives. Reformatting also enables the inclusion of library materials in other media, such as multimedia information services. The drawback of this process, of course, is the issue of technological obsolescence. If reformatting relies on technology that becomes obsolete, the preservation effort is seriously compromised. The task of reformatting all materials that used acidic paper, nitrate films, or other degradable materials is monumental, generally requiring cooperation between many libraries and a substantial infusion of government funds.

Deacidification

      In certain cases, reformatting is not the best solution to the problem of disintegration. The original material may have intrinsic value as an artifact, or it may lose some of its information in the reformatting process. In such cases, paper materials are deacidified by one of a number of chemical processes, some of which can also strengthen paper that has already been weakened. Mass deacidification of paper is an increasingly important part of preservation.

Future-conscious manufacturing

      The most sensible solution to the preservation of books and journals for future use is the adoption of nonacidic paper by publishers. Many paper plants have begun to make a nonacidic paper that, with good care, will last for centuries rather than decades. Use of this product for book production will obviate the crumbling away of centuries of intellectual and cultural activity.

User services

      The second of the two main functions of libraries is directed at actively exploiting the collection to satisfy the information needs of library users.

Circulation

      Although many of the libraries in antiquity were accessible to the literate public, this was almost certainly for reference only. Some monastic libraries, however, are known to have allowed the monks to borrow books for study in their cells; the Rule of St. Benedict explicitly permitted this, and the librarian exacted penance from any monk unable to confirm that he had actually read his book. Some university libraries may have lent books to members of their faculties, but the notion of lending, or circulating, libraries did not become popular until the 18th century.

      The rapid development of public libraries in the 19th century led to the extension of the practice and to the introduction of various systems for the recording of loans. All the early systems depended on the use of one or more cards on which were recorded the name of the book, the name of the borrower, and the date on which the book should be returned. Many libraries now use a computerized circulation system that records information about both the user and the material in circulation.

Reference and retrieval

      Open access to the shelves and the facility to borrow books mean that much of the use of a modern library is at the free choice of the reader; scholars and scientists continue to emphasize the value of browsing among the shelves of a well-arranged library. “Chance favours only the prepared mind,” said Louis Pasteur, and serendipitous discoveries of useful information during the search for some other subject have become a familiar and welcome aspect of using a library or other information service.

      In reference service, librarians have traditionally given personal help to readers in making the best use of collections to satisfy their information needs. The publication of printed catalogs and bibliographies, the accessibility of on-line catalogs (information system) and multimedia databases, and the organizing of interlibrary cooperation have widened the range of resources available to the individual reader. As a result, librarians increasingly are called upon to help users determine the most efficient tool to use in their research. In scholarly libraries, assistance to readers once was generally limited to explaining the layout of the library and the use of the catalog; in universities, members of the faculty would have been expected to know the literature of their subject better than any librarian. But in public libraries, and still more so in special libraries in the fields of science and technology, readers have long sought guidance about information on their subject as well as about the library. This process has been greatly extended by the enormous increases in research worldwide and in the quantity of information and publications available in many languages and by the excellence of the indexes, abstracts, bibliographies, and databases that help to control the documentation of this massive output.

      The subject search is one of the areas on which advancing technology has had the greatest impact. In many libraries, a variety of computer-based information retrieval systems provide ready access to details about off-site as well as on-site materials. For example, one development in subject access increases the amount of information that is available within library catalogs by including details from the table of contents or from a book's index. Other systems, rather than just listing the abstract of a journal article, include the entire article. These full-text references eliminate the intermediate step characteristic of older systems in which users first performed an electronic search and then obtained the articles themselves in print or microfilm.

      Reference services can be broadly divided into two main aspects, usually known as retrospective searching (or information retrieval) and current-awareness service (or selective dissemination of information). These terms indicate a specialization that has occurred in this core activity of libraries and that grew mainly out of the expansion of scientific and industrial research during and after World War I. Three factors strongly influenced this process. First, the increase in research and publication affected all types of libraries and brought with it a similar increase in subject specialization. Second, working scientists, accustomed to referring to reports in published papers, were content to leave the organizing of information searches to a colleague who knew and understood their work. And, third, the widespread application of scientific research in industry provided an extra stimulus to the division of labour because of the necessity for speedy application of results to gain commercial success in production.

      Some information specialists have tried to draw a distinction between their reference work and the more general reference services of librarians, but in most countries there is close cooperation among all engaged in these professional activities. Most acknowledge a mutual interest and influence, while the range of duties allows, indeed requires, different emphases in different institutions.

      All agree, however, in acknowledging the duty to assist users to find answers to inquiries and to carry out searches in existing literature. Such a service requires many qualities, personal and professional: a detailed knowledge of books, periodicals, and all other forms of record; an ability to search efficiently in catalogs, indexes, abstracts, and databases; and, above all, a sensitive understanding of each user's needs. Matching the terms used by a reader in posing a question to the terms used by authors, indexers, and catalogers may well constitute one of the subtlest of professional skills.

Retrospective searching

      The outcome of a search can take many forms, from a short, factual statement that gives the needed information to a short list of relevant references or a full-scale bibliography. In a computer search the first request often reveals that the database contains hundreds or even thousands of “hits,” or references relating to the topic requested. The number can be reduced by narrowing the subject, adding more specific details, or defining more precisely the information needed. When a reasonable number of hits has been reached, the computer can be instructed to display the details of a few references to show the reader whether or not the search has covered the right subject area. If it has, the set of references or abstracts may then be obtained in the form of a printout; if it has not, the search begins again using new terms for the request.

      In the specialized information centre a professional researcher can conduct the search and provide a state-of-the-art review of the literature in narrative form instead of as a collection of references. The service represents a peak of efficiency on behalf of the client, who has neither the time nor the resources to make the same review. The value to industry and commerce has encouraged private individuals to become information brokers—i.e., to provide these services as a commercial enterprise.

Current-awareness service

      The purpose of a current-awareness service is to inform the users about new acquisitions in their libraries. Public libraries in particular have used display boards and shelves to draw attention to recent additions, and many libraries produce complete or selective lists for circulation to patrons. Some libraries have adopted a practice of selective dissemination of information (sometimes referred to as SDI), whereby librarians conduct regular searches of databases to find references to new articles or other materials that fit a particular patron's interest profile and forward the results of these searches to the patron.

      One development of the concept of SDI in the electronic environment is a computer program that scans computer bulletin boards, electronic mail messages, and similar networked information resources and selects items that meet a user profile. Such programs enable individual users to keep abreast of the large amount of information available through computer networks without having to sift through much material that may be of little interest or relevance to them.

Community information

Library extension programs

      The growth of information services in special libraries, followed by college and university libraries, also has influenced public library practice in library extension programs and community information services. Extension programs are usually arranged in cooperation with local educational organizations, university extramural courses, parent-teacher associations, and so on. In developing countries with nascent publishing and book trades, public libraries can offer valuable assistance to local authors, particularly those writing in indigenous languages, by providing facilities for authors to give lectures, hold seminars, and develop their own skills in direct relation with their potential readers. In European, African, and American libraries, poets or writers in residence have appeared as a part of similar action to bring authors and readers together.

Community awareness programs

      In North America, community needs for informal information are often met by the public library's community awareness service (or information and referral service), though practice is far from standardized. This community outreach program is an important feature in many mostly rural societies. The Jamaica Library Service, for example, has long made a practice of setting up a stall at farmers' markets to supply up-to-date books and pamphlets on agriculture. Public libraries in China regularly set up special links with local factories for the supply of technical literature and specialist advisory staff.

Interlibrary relations

Library cooperation

Interlibrary lending

      The publication of bibliographies and library catalogs heightened awareness that no library could afford to be self-sufficient, and this awareness in turn stimulated interest in various forms of interlibrary cooperation. Cooperation probably originated informally, with readers referring to union catalogs to locate libraries that contained the books they wanted. One of the earliest formal organizations began with the Central Library for Students, founded in London by Albert Mansbridge in 1916. This was transformed in 1930 into the National Central Library, which continued to act as a lending library but also formed the centre of a network of regional library bureaus. The bureaus were located in a major regional library and, with one exception, built up union catalogs of holdings in the local public libraries to facilitate interlibrary lending. The National Central Library encouraged other university and special libraries to participate. The National Central Library has since become part of the British Library Lending Division, which undertakes a major part of interlibrary lending both in the United Kingdom and internationally.

      The progress of interlibrary lending, coupled with the great losses suffered by libraries in Europe and Asia during World War II, led to an interest in cooperative acquisition of new materials. In 1948 the British National Book Centre was set up at the National Central Library in London to gather unwanted duplicates and to distribute them to the libraries that had suffered losses. It proved to be of incalculable value and was soon followed by the United States Book Exchange; both distributed lists of wants and offers to their member libraries.

Cooperative acquisition and storage

      An ambitious program for cooperative acquisition of foreign materials by American libraries was conceived in the Library of Congress in 1942. This was the Farmington Plan: it involved the recruitment of purchasing agents in many countries, whose task was to buy their countries' current publications and distribute them to American libraries according to a scheme of subject specialization. Many criticisms were leveled at the scheme, and as a blanket operation it inevitably acquired a certain amount of trivia; but many research libraries have benefited by the acquisition of materials that otherwise would have been difficult to obtain.

      Pressure on library space spurred librarians to discuss means of cooperative storage. Perhaps the foremost example is the Center for Research Libraries (formerly the Midwest Interlibrary Center) in Chicago, which began in 1952 as a centre for deposit of duplicate and little-used materials from research libraries. With the aid of a special grant, the University of London established a depository library, at Royal Holloway College away from the centre of London, to which the colleges of the university can send materials for either cooperative or private storage. The British Library Lending Division also acts as a cooperative store; it receives unwanted items from any library and makes them generally available. Both of these libraries reserve the right to refuse items that they already have in cooperative storage.

Cooperative cataloging

      A number of important organizations facilitating library cooperation have been established to store and retrieve catalog records. In the United States, a library cooperative in Ohio grew into the OCLC Online Computer Library Center, a not-for-profit company with a database of millions of catalog records to which libraries can purchase access. Other organizations that store catalog records for retrieval by participating libraries have a regional focus or serve only one type of library, such as research libraries. In Canada, two organizations developed for storing bibliographic data; one is in the National Library of Canada and the other started as the cataloging centre of the University of Toronto and evolved into a for-profit corporation selling bibliographic records and other computer services to libraries. In Britain, the British Library became the supplier of cooperative library cataloging to all British libraries. Other library networks have been built around common automation choices. Groups of libraries that use the same circulation system or OPAC frequently organize to exchange information, advice, and bibliographic records.

Associations and international organizations

      The wide variety of interlibrary organizations illustrated above makes for a dynamic and flexible infrastructure supporting library cooperation. Many library networks evolve from one type of organization into another. New organizations come into existence and old ones cease to function. Against this pattern of change, library associations provide a steady influence in favour of library cooperation. These associations, found at national, state, and local levels, provide a forum for discussing and adopting standards that encourage the sharing of resources. Such standards include the framework for interlibrary lending, the international cataloging codes and standards, and communications standards that allow library computer systems to be linked to each other.

      The oldest organization in the library and information field is the International Federation for Information and Documentation (see above, The Universal Decimal system). It was founded in 1895 in Brussels as the Institut International de Bibliographie by Paul Otlet and Henri-Marie Lafontaine, as part of their plan to create an index of world literature on cards. The institute has many international committees, and some, especially those concerned with classification research and the constant revision of the Universal Decimal Classification, are very active. The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA; Fédération Internationale des Associations de Bibliothécaires et des Bibliothèques, or FIAB) was founded in 1927 and first met formally in Rome in 1928. The organization publishes the IFLA Journal.

      The International Council on Archives (ICA) was established with the help of UNESCO in 1948, and the first International Congress of Archivists was held in Paris in 1950. Early and continuing interest has centred on the microfilming, conservation, and preservation of historical records and on the development of standards for archive descriptions.

      All these associations have received considerable moral and financial support from UNESCO, the first General Conference of which took place in 1947. From its inception UNESCO has placed great importance on the encouragement of bibliography and libraries, public libraries in particular. (Part of its program was inherited from a League of Nations organization called the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, a principal concern of which was libraries.) UNESCO's support has led to public library development in a large number of countries, as well as many other library-related projects.

      The technical committee of the International Organization for Standardization, another United Nations body, has helped to formulate and promulgate a number of standards on bibliographical formats, particularly those related to computer processing.

Douglas John Foskett Ed.

Additional Reading

The changing role of libraries

Many authors speculate on the future of libraries in an electronic age. Michael Buckland, Redesigning Library Services: A Manifesto (1992), discusses what libraries should do to hold on to their enduring values while adapting to technological change. William F. Birdsall, The Myth of the Electronic Library: Librarianship and Social Change in America (1994), provides an informed and insightful consideration of the impact of electronic information services on the social, cultural, and political role of the library. Charles R. McClure, William E. Moen, and Joe Ryan (eds.), Libraries and the Internet/NREN: Perspectives, Issues, and Challenges (1994); and Charles R. McClure, John Carlo Bertot, and Douglas L. Zweizig, Public Libraries and the Internet: Study Results, Policy Issues, and Recommendations (1994), discuss the impact of the Internet on library functions. Drawing on literature from both librarianship and other disciplines, Michael A. Harris and Stan A. Hannah, Into the Future: The Foundations of Library and Information Services in the Post-Industrial Era (1993), examines how libraries have used and been shaped by the growth of an information economy. Geoffrey Nunberg, “The Places of Books in the Age of Electronic Reproduction,” Representations, 42:13–37 (Spring 1993), examines the book as a physical object in contrast to the electronic text. Linda Scovill, Librarians and Publishers in the Scholarly Information Process: Transitions in the Electronic Age (1995), summarizes discussions of a closed meeting held between librarians and publishers.Leigh S. Estabrook

The history of libraries

Much library history can be found in three subject encyclopaedias: Allen Kent et al., Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 35 vol. (1968–83), continued with supplemental volumes (1984– ); Robert Wedgeworth (ed.), World Encyclopedia of Library and Information Services, 3rd ed. (1993); and Wayne A. Wiegand and Donald G. Davis (eds.), Encyclopedia of Library History (1994). John Feather, A Dictionary of Book History (1986), helps define the intersection between print culture and library history. Luciano Canfora, The Vanished Library (1989; originally published in Italian, 1986), is a highly readable account of the ancient Library of Alexandria. Karl Christ, The Handbook of Medieval Library History, rev. by Anton Kern, trans. from German and ed. by Theophil M. Otto (1984), is still useful.

Types of libraries

Helpful works on types of libraries include Mohamed Makki Sibai, Mosque Libraries: An Historical Study (1987); James Thompson (ed.), University Library History: An International Review (1980); and Jesse H. Shera, Foundations of the American Public Library: The Origins of the Public Library Movement in New England, 1629–1855 (1949, reissued 1974). Model library histories of particular countries include André Vernet (ed.), Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, 4 vol. (1988–92); and A.K. Ohdedar (āditya Ohadedāra), The Growth of the Library in Modern India: 1498–1836 (1966).National libraries are dealt with in Maurice B. Line and Joyce Line (eds.), National Libraries (1979), and National Libraries 2 (1987); and in the beautifully illustrated Anthony Hobson, Great Libraries (1970).Academic libraries are the subject of Stephen E. Atkins, The Academic Library in the American University (1991); and Allen B. Veaner, Academic Librarianship in a Transformational Age: Program, Politics, and Personnel (1990). A more detailed discussion of the problems of handling large academic library collections is found in Clare Jenkins and Mary Morley (eds.), Collection Management in Academic Libraries (1991).General treatments of public libraries include W.J. Murison, The Public Library: Its Origins, Purpose, and Significance, 3rd ed. (1988); and Verna L. Pungitore, Public Librarianship: An Issues-Oriented Approach (1989). More detailed accounts of services to adults and to children are contained in Kathleen M. Heim and Danny P. Wallace (eds.), Adult Services: An Enduring Focus for Public Libraries (1990); and Mae Benne, Principles of Children's Services in Public Libraries (1991).Two books that treat the impact of special libraries on organizations are José-Marie Griffiths and Donald W. King, Special Libraries: Increasing the Information Edge (1993); and Joanne G. Marshall, The Impact of the Special Library on Corporate Decision-Making (1993).School libraries are covered in some detail in American Association Of School Librarians and Association For Educational Communications And Technology, Information Power: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs (1988); Betty J. Morris, John T. Gillespie, and Diana L. Spirt, Administering the School Library Media Center, 3rd ed. (1992); and James E. Herring, School Librarianship, 2nd ed. (1988).Readers wishing to find more detail on archives may consult James Gregory Bradsher (ed.), Managing Archives and Archival Institutions (1988); and Richard J. Cox, Managing Institutional Archives: Foundational Principles and Practices (1992).

The library operation

Robert D. Stueart and Barbara B. Moran, Library and Information Center Management, 4th ed. (1993), focuses on general topics. The problems of developing and managing library collections are dealt with in several texts: Beatrice Kovacs, The Decision-Making Process for Library Collections: Case Studies in Four Types of Libraries (1990); G. Edward Evans, Developing Library and Information Center Collections, 2nd ed. (1987); and G.E. Gorman and B.R. Howes, Collection Development for Libraries (1989). Library techniques for organizing information are covered in Lois Mai Chan, Cataloging and Classification: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (1994); and Bohdan S. Wynar and Arlene G. Taylor, Introduction to Cataloging and Classification, 8th ed. (1992). Issues involved in developing and managing library services to users are thoroughly covered in two standard textbooks: William A. Katz, Introduction to Reference Work, 6th ed., 2 vol. (1992); and Richard E. Bopp and Linda C. Smith (eds.), Reference and Information Services: An Introduction (1991). A good introduction to issues and practices of preservation of library materials may be found in John N. Depew, A Library, Media, and Archival Preservation Handbook (1991).Anne Woodsworth and Thomas B. Wall, Library Cooperation and Networks: A Basic Reader (1991), is an introductory text discussing interlibrary cooperation. The development of library associations is chronicled in Willem R.H. Koops and Joachim Wieder (eds.), IFLA's First Fifty Years: Achievement and Challenge in International Librarianship (1977); W.A. Munford, A History of the Library Association, 1877–1977 (1976); and Wayne A. Wiegand, The Politics of an Emerging Profession: The American Library Association, 1876–1917 (1986). Ed.

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