Library

Library

A library (from French "librairie"; Latin "liber" = book) is an organized collection of resources made accessible to a defined community for reference or borrowing. It provides physical or digital access to material, and may be a physical building or room, or a virtual space, or both. A library's collection can include books, periodicals, newspapers, manuscripts, films, maps, prints, documents, microform, CDs, cassettes, videotapes, DVDs, e-books, audiobooks, databases, and other formats. Libraries range in size from a few shelves of books to several million items. In Latin and Greek, the idea of bookcase is represented by Bibliotheca and Bibliothēkē (Greek: βιβλιοθήκη): derivatives of these mean library in many modern languages, e.g. French bibliothèque.

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Famous quotes containing the word library:

    Madam, a circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge; it blossoms through the year. And depend on it ... that they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last.
    Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816)

    With sighs more lunar than bronchial,
    Howbeit eluding fallopian diagnosis,
    She simpers into the tribal library and reads
    That Keats died of tuberculosis . . .
    Allen Tate (1899–1979)

    I view askance a book that remains undisturbed for a year. Oughtn’t it to have a ticket of leave? I think I may safely say no book in my library remains unopened a year at a time, except my own works and Tennyson’s.
    Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)