Description

A library is an organized collection ofsources of information and similar resources, made accessible to adefined community for reference or borrowing. It provides physicalor digital access to material, and may be a physical building orroom, or a virtual space, or both.[1] A library's collection caninclude books, periodicals, newspapers, manuscripts, films, maps,prints, documents, microform, CDs, cassettes, videotapes, DVDs,Blu-ray Discs, e-books, audiobooks, databases, and other formats.Libraries range in size from a few shelves of books to severalmillion items. In Latin and Greek, the idea of bookcase isrepresented by Bibliotheca and Bibliothēkē (Greek: βιβλιοθήκη):derivatives of these mean library in many modern languages, e.g.French bibliothèque.

The first libraries consisted of archives of the earliest form ofwriting—the clay tablets in cuneiform script discovered in Sumer,some dating back to 2600 BC. Private or personal libraries made upof written books appeared in classical Greece in the 5th centuryBC. In the 6th century, at the very close of the Classical period,the great libraries of the Mediterranean world remained those ofConstantinople and Alexandria.

A library is organized for use and maintained by a public body, aninstitution, a corporation, or a private individual. Public andinstitutional collections and services may be intended for use bypeople who choose not to—or cannot afford to—purchase an extensivecollection themselves, who need material no individual canreasonably be expected to have, or who require professionalassistance with their research. In addition to providing materials,libraries also provide the services of librarians who are expertsat finding and organizing information and at interpretinginformation needs. Libraries often provide quiet areas forstudying, and they also often offer common areas to facilitategroup study and collaboration. Libraries often provide publicfacilities for access to their electronic resources and theInternet. Modern libraries are increasingly being redefined asplaces to get unrestricted access to information in many formatsand from many sources. They are extending services beyond thephysical walls of a building, by providing material accessible byelectronic means, and by providing the assistance of librarians innavigating and analyzing very large amounts of information with avariety of digital tools.