library

      English

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      Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris

      Etymology

      Middle English librarie, from Anglo-Norman librarie, from Old French librairie, from Latin librarium (“bookcase, chest for books”), from librarius (“concerning books”), from liber (“the inner bark of trees, paper, parchment, book”), probably derived from a Proto-Indo-European base *leub(h) (“to strip, to peel”). Displaced native Middle English bochus, bochous (“library, bookhouse”) (from Old English bōchūs (“library, bookhouse”)).

      Pronunciation

      Noun

      library (plural libraries)

      1. An institution which holds books and/or other forms of stored information for use by the public or qualified people. It is usual, but not a defining feature of a library, for it to be housed in rooms of a building, to lend items of its collection to members either with or without payment, and to provide various other services for its community of users.
      2. A collection of books or other forms of stored information. An individual may refer to his collection of books and other items as his library.
      3. An equivalent collection of analogous information in a non-printed form, e.g. record library
      4. (computer science) A collection of software subprograms that provides functionality, to be incorporated into or used by a computer program.

      Usage notes

      • False friends of library include French librairie (“bookshop”) ,Italian libreria (“bookshop”) and Portuguese livraria (“bookshop”).

      Derived terms

      terms derived from library

      Translations

      institution which holds books etc.
      collection of books
      collection of records
      collection of subprograms
      The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.
      Translations to be checked

      See also

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      Last modified on 18 June 2013, at 09:43