Library

• 1. Introduction

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  Some of the oldest libraries on record were not shelves of books at all. They were archives of clay tablets in cuneiform script, discovered in Sumer, with some dating back to 2600 BC. From those baked tablets to a 3D printing station with a 3D scanner sitting in a modern reading room, a library has always been one thing at its core. It is a collection of books, and possibly other materials and media, accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. But that plain definition hides a far stranger story. Why would a conqueror torch a collection of documents before he had even finished a massacre? How did one room of index cards grow into a database anyone can search from home? What does a certified therapy dog have to do with a child learning to read? The word itself points back to a single Latin root, liber, meaning book or document. Where that root traveled, and what grew from it, is the subject of everything that follows.

• 2. Memory Worth Destroying

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  In 1256, the Mongols carried out a massacre of the Nizaris at Alamut, and then they set fire to the library there. The conqueror Juwayni boasted that the fame of that library had spread throughout the world. The act was not random. Throughout history, the destruction of libraries has been critical for conquerors who wish to destroy every trace of a vanquished community's recorded memory. Burning the books erased the people more completely than the killing alone. The Fatimids, who ruled from 909 to 1171, held many great libraries within their domains. The historian Ibn Abi Tayyi described their palace library, which probably contained the largest collection of literature on earth at the time, as a wonder of the world. The libraries of Timbuktu were established in the fourteenth century and drew scholars from all over the world. Because libraries hold such valuable material, they remain primary targets in many state and domestic conflicts, at constant risk of destruction and looting. Today that danger is met by formal coordination. Blue Shield International and UNESCO operate the protection of libraries, including the creation of no-strike lists that preserve the coordinates of important cultural monuments so they are spared in conflict.

• 3. From Card Drawers To Webcats

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  Before the computer age, a library told users what it held through the card catalogue. It was a cabinet, or many cabinets, filled with drawers of index cards that identified books and other materials. In a large library, that catalogue often filled an entire room. Desktop computers and the Internet replaced those drawers with electronic catalogue databases, often called webcats or online public access catalogues, known as OPACs. These let users search a library's holdings from any location with Internet access. Finding a record is only half the task. Large libraries may be scattered across multiple buildings in a town, each with multiple floors and rooms, holding resources across rows of shelves called bays. Once a user finds an item in the catalogue, they still must retrieve it physically, helped along by signage, maps, GPS systems, or RFID tagging. The shift to digital has measurably changed how people use physical buildings. Between 2002 and 2004, the average American academic library saw overall transactions decline by roughly 2.2 percent. The University of California Library System saw circulation fall 54 percent between 1991 and 2001, dropping from 8,377,000 books to 3,832,000.

• 4. The People Behind The Desk

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  Librarians are trained experts in finding, selecting, circulating, and organising information. They interpret information needs and navigate large amounts of information across a variety of resources, and their field of study is called library and information science. The work is divided into departments that most visitors never see. Circulation handles user accounts and the loaning, returning, and shelving of materials. Collection Development orders materials and maintains the budgets. Reference staffs a desk answering questions through structured reference interviews, and Technical Services works behind the scenes cataloguing new arrivals and deaccessioning weeded materials. Getting patrons to actually use all of this has been a problem for a long time. In the public libraries of the United States, beginning in the 19th century, the difficulty drove the emergence of the library instruction movement, which advocated library user education. One of its early leaders was John Cotton Dana. That basic form of instruction is sometimes known today as information literacy. Privacy has become a newer professional concern, addressed through workshops run by the Library Freedom Project, which teaches librarians about digital tools such as the Tor network to thwart mass surveillance.

• 5. A Library For Every Reader

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  A national library serves as a national repository of information and holds the right of legal deposit. That right is a legal requirement that publishers in the country deposit a copy of each publication with the library. Unlike a public library, a national library rarely allows citizens to borrow books, and its collections often include numerous rare, valuable, or significant works. Academic libraries sit on college and university campuses, serving students and faculty, and increasingly check out laptop computers, web cameras, or scientific calculators. Children's libraries form their own world, seeking to acquaint the young with the world's literature and to cultivate a love for reading. Among their offerings is PAWS TO READ, where children read aloud to certified therapy dogs. Because animals are a calming influence and pass no judgment, children build confidence and a love of reading. Special libraries serve narrower communities, from hospitals and law firms to women's libraries and LGBTQ libraries, with examples such as the Vancouver Women's Library and the Women's Library at LSE. Some countries run a single library system for the whole nation. The National Library of Venezuela operates 685 branches.

• 6. Building For Books

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  As collections grew, the sheer weight of books forced a new kind of architecture. The stack system, which arose in the 19th century, keeps a library's books in a space separate from the reading room. Book stacks evolved into a fairly standard form. Cast iron and steel frameworks supported the bookshelves and also held up the floors. Those floors were often built of translucent blocks to let light pass through, but not transparent ones, for reasons of modesty. Electric lights changed everything about how stacks were lit. The use of glass floors was largely discontinued, though floors were still often made of metal grating so air could circulate in multi-story stacks. When space ran short, shelves were set on tracks, a method called compact shelving, to cut down on wasted aisle space. A newer kind of space turns the building's purpose inside out. A library makerspace provides tools, technology, and room for patrons to design, prototype, and create. These spaces may hold a photographic studio, a digital recording studio, a sewing room, a woodshop, or fab labs with 3D printers, CNC machines, and laser cutters, supporting STEM and STEAM education and lifelong learning for all ages.

• 7. Numbers And The Network

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  Finland has the highest number of registered book borrowers per capita in the world, with over half of its population registered as borrowers. The patterns of borrowing tell their own history. In the United States, public library users borrowed on average roughly 15 books per user per year from 1856 to 1978. From 1978 to 2004, book circulation per user declined approximately 50 percent. The growth of audiovisual circulation, estimated at 25 percent of total circulation in 2004, accounts for about half of that decline. Libraries answered the rise of the Internet with their own tools. The Online Computer Library Center lets anyone search the world's largest repository of library records through its WorldCat online database. A term coined in 2005, Library 2.0, named the library's response to the challenge of Google, using Web 2.0 technology to make the institution more user-driven through commenting, tagging, bookmarking, and online social networks. Standards keep this sprawling network coherent. The International Organization for Standardization, through its Technical Committee 46, has published standards including ISO 2789:2006 on international library statistics and ISO 11620:1998 on library performance indicators.