Librarianship

Library, defined

7 Comments

What is your definition of the word “library”?

I’m not looking for a verbatim dictionary entry; I’m hoping to discover what it is that library means in our society.

Please add your definition of library to the comments!

7 thoughts on “Library, defined”

  1. I know the modern definition leans more towards a community center, offering internet access, play groups, interest groups, cd listening centers, guest speakers (not readers, speakers) and after school activities. I have to dig my heels in here, though, and say I’m a stickler for a library that puts reading and love of books first and foremost on their agenda. I can still go into my library at 4:00 in the afternoon and find a quiet space to read a magazine or do some research. While there are happy kids wandering the stacks and some in book groups in the meeting room, there is not the chaotic playtime happening in and around the jr book section that I’ve witnessed in some other libraries, particularly in urban areas where kids often don’t have someone waiting at home for them after school. It’s a better, safer place than the street…so I guess it’s a haven for those kids, and they’re surrounded by books, so maybe something positive will happen just from being in such a good place. I don’t know, I guess in today’s society the library has had to grow beyond its original purpose of making reading material accessible to the general public. I still think, though, that primarily it needs to promote reading, and secondarily can be a gathering place for the community. I’m probably not alone in this, but I still feel a little fuddy duddyish about my view. You?

  2. OK, you probably knew I’d look in the dictionary. Here’s the online version: library

    c.1374, from Anglo-Fr. librarie, from O.Fr. librairie “collection of books,” noun use of adj. librarius “concerning books,” from L. librarium “chest for books,” from liber (gen. libri) “book, paper, parchment,” originally “the inner bark of trees,” probably a derivative of PIE base *leub(h)- “to strip, to peel” (see leaf). The equivalent word in most Romance languages now means “bookseller’s shop.” Librarian is from 1713; earlier form was library-keeper (1647).

    I’d say a library is a place that, most simply, houses books. And books? They are for reading. That’s the thing. Research, pleasure, escape, just browsing — whatever reason anyone reads, that’s what libraries are for. Reading. Allowing words to conjure up meaning, images, stories, the pleasures of the cinema on the screen of your own brain!

    I’d babble on about how we have forgotten to read…or are too lazy…or something…but my goodness. Libraries? When you asked your question I thought: libraries are like a giant collective mind. You open the door and walk in and there, before you, is the world on the page. How great is that!

  3. I’m still hoping to get some more responses to this question – but here’s what Jim found when reading the Wikipedia entry on Stephen Fry. Fry is quoted as saying this about libraries:

    “What’s great about them is that anybody can go into them and find a book and borrow it free of charge and read it. They don’t have to steal it from a bookshop… You know when you’re young, you’re growing up, they’re almost sexually exciting places because books are powerhouses of knowledge, and therefore they’re kind of slightly dark and dangerous. You see books that kind of make you go ‘Oh!'”

    (from Stephen Fry’s March 2001 appearance on BBC television’s Room 101)

  4. It’s interesting (and heartening) that books and love of reading are central to all our entries (so far). 🙂

  6. …actually, I remember going into the stacks at CL and reading some of the textbook material with a certain boyfriend whose name shall not be mentioned…

  7. And who can forget the clear plastic overlays of the human anatomy pages in the encyclopedias? Exciting stuff to an eight year old dude in the 70’s.

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