Latin libraria bookshop, feminine (used as a noun)

of librarius relating to books, from liber, libr- book.

THE LIBRARY
Collections of written knowledge were originally kept in
what was called a repository. (Reposit means to put
away or store. Think deposit which is similar in
meaning.) Written knowledge did not always mean
books. Before books, there were clay tablets, and
archeologists have discovered that the Mesopotamian
people collected thousands of them in a repository
more than 5,000 years ago! (Mesopotamia was an
ancient region of southwest Asia in what is now
modern-day Iraq.) Archeologists have also uncovered
collections of ancient papyrus scrolls that date back to
1300 B.C. (Papyrus scrolls were made from a grassy
plant, and were used by Egyptians, Greeks, and
Romans.) The ancient Greeks promoted the idea of
repositories through their keen interest in literacy and
intellectual life. Collections in repositories began to
grow because the Greeks encouraged authors to write
on a variety of subjects, which copy shops then made
into books. These copy shops were not Kinkos!
Copying books was done by hand, and (as you can
imagine) it took a lot of care and concentration to make
a copy exactly right. How accurately a book was copied
was called its trustworthiness. (Imagine accidentally
leaving out the word not in the following sentence: The
emperor decided not to attack. As you can see, a
books trustworthiness was very important!) The
repositories did not have shelves like our modern
libraries do. The scrolls were kept in little slots, or
pigeonholes, with their titles written on wooden tags at
the openings. There were various jobs to be had inside
a repository. It was a great honor (and position of
power) to serve as the director. Scrolls from the tagged
pigeonholed shelves were fetched and returned by
people called pages. They transported the scrolls in
leather or wooden buckets. Scribes made copies of
works to be added to a librarys collection, and
recopied scrolls that had been damaged. But these
repositories (or libraries) were only available to
scholars and scientists. Ordinary people were not
welcome. You could not just go down to your local
repository and check out a scroll! During the
Renaissance era (14th-16th centuries) wealthy people
in Europe began building their own private libraries. It
became a status symbolif you were rich, you had a
library! It was Johann Gutenbergs 1450s invention of
moveable type that changed bookmaking forever,
replacing handwritten books with printed ones and
making them more readily available. There were many
libraries established throughout Europe, but the oldest
library in America started with a 400- book donation to
a new university in Massachusetts by a man named
John Harvard. (See how valuable books are? They
named the university after him!) The first public library
in the United States opened in New Hampshire in 1833.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, wealthy
businessman Andrew Carnegie built and equipped over
3,000 public libraries in the United States. Over the
ages, libraries have been destroyed by wars, fires, and
floods, but they have been rebuilt and expanded as a
necessary and valuable repository of knowledge.
Library of Congress Classification

The Library of Congress Classification (LCC) is a

classification system that was first developed in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to
organize and arrange the book collections of the
Library of Congress. Over the course of the twentieth
century, the system was adopted for use by other
libraries as well, especially large academic libraries in
the United States. It is currently one of the most widely
used library classification systems in the world. The
Library's Policy and Standards Division maintains and
develops the system, posting lists of updates.
The system divides all knowledge into twenty-one basic
classes, each identified by a single letter of the
alphabet. Most of these alphabetical classes are further
divided into more specific subclasses, identified by twoletter, or occasionally three-letter, combinations. For
example, class N, Art, has subclasses NA, Architecture;
NB,Sculpture, ND, Painting; as well as several other
subclasses. Each subclass includes a loosely
hierarchical arrangement of the topics pertinent to the
subclass, going from the general to the more specific.
Individual topics are often broken down by specific
places, time periods, or bibliographic forms (such as
periodicals, biographies, etc.). Each topic (often
referred to as a caption) is assigned a single number or
a span of numbers. Whole numbers used in LCC may
range from one to four digits in length, and may be
further extended by the use of decimal numbers. Some
subtopics appear in alphabetical, rather than
hierarchical, lists and are represented by decimal
numbers that combine a letter of the alphabet with a
numeral , e.g. .B72 or .K535. Relationships among
topics in LCC are shown not by the numbers that are
assigned to them, but by indenting subtopics under the
larger topics that they are a part of, much like an
outline. In this respect, it is different from more strictly
hierarchical classification systems, such as the Dewey
Decimal Classification, where hierarchical relationships
among topics are shown by numbers that can be
continuously subdivided.
Abstract- A brief, objective summary of the essential
content of a book, article, or other work, presenting the
main points in the same order as the original but with
no independent literary value. An abstract can be
indicative, informative, critical, or written from a
particular point of view (slanted). In a scholarly journal
article, the abstract follows the title and the name(s) of
the author(s) and precedes the text.
Almanac-An annual compendium of practical dates,
facts, and statistics, current and/or retrospective, often
arranged in tables to facilitate comparison. Almanacs
can be general (example: World Almanac and Book of
Facts) or related to a specific subject or academic
discipline (Almanac of American Politics).
Bibliography A systematic list or enumeration of
written works by a specific author or on a given
subject, or that share one or more common
characteristics (language, form, period, place of
publication, etc.). When a bibliography is about a
person, the subject is the bibliographee. A bibliography
may
be
comprehensive
or
selective.
Long
bibliographies may be published serially or in book

form. The person responsible

bibliography is the bibliographer.

for

compiling

Dictionary A single-volume or multivolume reference

work containing brief explanatory entries for terms and
topics related to a specific subject or field of inquiry,
usually arranged alphabetically (example: Dictionary of
Neuropsychology). The entries in a dictionary are
usually shorter than those contained in an
encyclopedia on the same subject, but the word
"dictionary" is often used in the titles of works that
should more appropriately be called encyclopedias
(example: Dictionary of the Middle Ages in 13
volumes).
Directory A list of people, companies, institutions,
organizations, etc., in alphabetical or classified order,
providing contact information (names, addresses,
phone/fax numbers, etc.) and other pertinent details
(affiliations, conferences, publications, membership,
etc.) in brief format, often published serially (example:
American Library Directory). In most libraries, current
directories are shelved in ready reference or in the
reference stacks.
Encyclopedia A book or numbered set of books
containing authoritative summary information about a
variety of topics in the form of short essays, usually
arranged alphabetically by headword or classified in
some manner. An entry may be signed or unsigned,
with or without illustration or a list of references for
further reading. Headwords and text are usually revised
periodically for publication in a new edition. In a
multivolume encyclopedia, any indexes are usually
located at the end of the last volume. Encyclopedias
may be general (example: Encyclopedia Americana) or
specialized, usually by subject (Encyclopedia of Bad
Taste) or discipline (Encyclopedia of Social Work).
Handbook A single-volume reference book of compact
size that provides concise factual information on a
specific subject, organized systematically for quick and
easy access. Statistical information is often published
in handbook form (example: Statistical Handbook on
the American Family). Some handbooks are published
serially (CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics).
Index Refers to an open-end finding guide to the
literature of an academic field or discipline (example:
Philosopher's Index), to works of a specific literary form
(Biography Index) or published in a specific format
(Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature), or to the
analyzed contents of a serial publication (New York
Times Index). Indexes of this kind are usually issued in
monthly
or
quarterly
paperback
supplements,
cumulated annually.
Yearbook An annual documentary, historical, or
memorial compendium of facts, photographs, statistics,
etc., about the events of the preceding year, often
limited to a specific country, institution, discipline, or
subject (example: Supreme Court Yearbook published
by Congressional Quarterly). Optional yearbooks are
offered by some publishers of general encyclopedias.
Most libraries place yearbooks on continuation order

and shelve them in the reference collection. Yearbooks

of historical significance may be stored in archives or
special collections.

A library catalogue or library catalogue' is a register

of all bibliographic items found in a library or group of
libraries, such as a network of libraries at several
locations. A bibliographic item can be any information
entity (e.g., books, computer files, graphics, realia,
cartographic materials, etc.) that is considered library
material (e.g., a single novel in an anthology), or a
group of library materials (e.g., a trilogy), or linked from
the catalog (e.g., a webpage) as far as it is relevant to
the catalog and to the users (patrons) of the library.
The card catalog was a familiar sight to library users
for generations, but it has been effectively replaced by
the online public access catalog (OPAC). Some still refer
to the online catalog as a "card catalog". Some libraries
with OPAC access still have card catalogs on site, but
these are now strictly a secondary resource and are
seldom updated. Many of the libraries that have
retained their physical card catalog post a sign advising
the last year that the card catalog was updated. Some
libraries have eliminated their card catalog in favour of
the OPAC for the purpose of saving space for other use,
such as additional shelving.

catalog card is an individual entry in a library catalog.

The first cards used may have been French playing
cards, which, in the 1700s, were blank on one side. [3] In
the mid-1800s, Natale Battezzati, an Italian publisher,
developed a card system for booksellers in which cards
represented authors, titles and subjects. Very shortly
afterward, Melvil Dewey and other American librarians
began to champion the card catalog because of its
great expandability. One of the first acts of the newly
formed American Library Association in 1876 was to set
standards for the size of the cards used in American
libraries, thus making their manufacture and the
manufacture of cabinets, uniform.[3]
In a physical catalog the information about an each
item is on a separate card, which is placed in order in
the catalog drawer depending on the type of record.
Here's an example of a catalog card, which would be
filed alphabetically in the Author section:

Arif, Abdul Majid.

Political structure in a changing Pakistani
village / by Abdul Majid Arif and Basharat
Hafeez

Andaleeb. 2nd ed. Lahore : ABC Press,

1985.
xvi, 367p. : ill. ; 22 cm.

Includes index.
ISBN 969-8612-02-5

Types

Traditionally, there are the following types of catalog:

Author catalog: a formal

catalog, sorted alphabetically according to the
authors' or editors' names of the entries.
Title catalog: a formal catalog, sorted
alphabetically according to the article of the
entries.

Dictionary catalog: a catalog in which all entries

(author, title, subject, series) are interfiled in a
single alphabetical order. This was the primary form
of card catalog in North American libraries just prior
to the introduction of the computer-based catalog
Keyword catalog: a subject catalog, sorted
alphabetically according to some system of
keywords.
Mixed alphabetic catalog forms: sometimes, one
finds a mixed author / title, or an author / title /
keyword catalog.
Systematic catalog: a subject catalog, sorted
according to some systematic subdivision of
subjects. Also called a Classified catalog.
Shelf list catalog: a formal catalog with entries
sorted in the same order as bibliographic items are
shelved. This catalog may also serve as the primary
inventory for the