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Universal Library
A universal library is a library with universal collections. This may be expressed in terms of it containing all existing information, useful information, all books, all works (regardless of format) or even all possible works. This ideal, although unrealizable, has influenced and continues to influence librarians and others and be a goal which is aspired to. Universal libraries are often assumed to have a complete set of useful features (such as finding aids, translation tools, alternative formats, etc.). History The Library of Alexandria is generally regarded as the first library approaching universality, although this idea may be more mythical than real. It is estimated that at one time, this library contained between 30 and 70 percent of all works in existence. The re-founded modern library has a non-universal collections policy. As a phrase, the "universal library" can be traced back to the naturalist Conrad Gessner's ''Bibliotheca universalis'' of 1545. In the 17th centur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Library
A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a virtual space, or both. A library's collection can include printed materials and other physical resources in many formats such as DVD, CD and cassette as well as access to information, music or other content held on bibliographic databases. A library, which may vary widely in size, may be organized for use and maintained by a public body such as a government; an institution such as a school or museum; a corporation; or a private individual. In addition to providing materials, libraries also provide the services of librarians who are trained and experts at finding, selecting, circulating and organizing information and at interpreting information needs, navigating and analyzing very large amounts of information with a variety of resources. L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Universal Library (Carnegie Mellon University)
The Million Book Project (or the Universal Library) was a book digitization project led by Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science and University Libraries from 2007–2008. Working with government and research partners in India ( Digital Library of India) and China, the project scanned books in many languages, using OCR to enable full text searching, and providing free-to-read access to the books on the web. , they have completed the scanning of 1 million books and have made the entire catalog accessible online. Description The ''Million Book Project'' was a 501(c)3 charity organization with various scanning centers throughout the world. By December 2007, more than 1.5 million books had been scanned, in 20 languages: 970,000 in Chinese; 360,000 in English; 50,000 in Telugu; and 40,000 in Arabic. Most of the books are in the public domain, but permission has been acquired to include over 60,000 copyrighted books (roughly 53,000 in English and 7,000 in Indian langu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Destruction Of Libraries
300px, The urn containing ashes of the most precious Polish incunabula and manuscripts, deliberately burnt in the Krasiński Library by a Nazi Germany">Nazi German ''Brandkommando'' following the fall of the Warsaw Uprising Libraries have been deliberately or accidentally destroyed or badly damaged. Sometimes a library is purposely destroyed as a form of cultural cleansing. There are examples of libraries accidentally destroyed by human actions. Others were damaged by natural disasters like earthquakes, floods or accidental fires. Library fires have happened sporadically through the centuries: notable examples are the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, the destruction of Library of Nalanda in India and the accidental burning of the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Germany. Causes vary from arson to the Sun's rays setting fire to leaflets through the action of a magnifying lens, as happened to a library in Northam, Devon. Causes and prevention In earlier times ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Library At Alexandria
The Great Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world. The Library was part of a larger research institution called the Mouseion, which was dedicated to the Muses, the nine goddesses of the arts.Murray, S. A., (2009). The library: An illustrated history. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, p.17 The idea of a universal library in Alexandria may have been proposed by Demetrius of Phalerum, an exiled Athenian statesman living in Alexandria, to Ptolemy I Soter, who may have established plans for the Library, but the Library itself was probably not built until the reign of his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The Library quickly acquired many papyrus scrolls, owing largely to the Ptolemaic kings' aggressive and well-funded policies for procuring texts. It is unknown precisely how many such scrolls were housed at any given time, but estimates range from 40,000 to 400,000 at its height. Alexandria came to be regarded ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lost Works
A lost work is a document, literary work, or piece of multimedia produced some time in the past, of which no surviving copies are known to exist. It can only be known through reference. This term most commonly applies to works from the classical world, although it is increasingly used in relation to modern works. A work may be lost to history through the destruction of an original manuscript and all later copies. Works—or, commonly, small fragments of works—have survived by being found by archaeologists during investigations, or accidentally by anybody, such as, for example, the Nag Hammadi library scrolls. Works also survived when they were reused as bookbinding materials, quoted or included in other works, or as palimpsests, where an original document is imperfectly erased so the substrate on which it was written can be reused. The discovery, in 1822, of Cicero's ''De re publica'' was one of the first major recoveries of a lost ancient text from a palimpsest. Another fam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shadow Library
Shadow libraries are online databases of readily available content that is normally obscured or otherwise not readily accessible. Such content may be inaccessible for a number of reasons, including the use of paywalls, copyright controls, or other barriers to accessibility placed upon the content by its original owners. Shadow libraries usually consist of textual information like in electronic books but may also include other digital media, including software, music, or films. Examples of shadow libraries include Library Genesis, Z-Library and Sci-Hub, which are popular academic shadow libraries. Motivation One of the primary motivations behind the creation of shadow libraries is to more readily disseminate academic content, especially papers from academic journals. Academic literature has become increasingly expensive as costs to access information created by scholars have risen dramatically in recent years, especially the costs of books. The term serials crisis has emer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wiktionary
Wiktionary ( , , rhyming with "dictionary") is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary of terms (including words, phrases, proverbs, linguistic reconstructions, etc.) in all natural languages and in a number of artificial languages. These entries may contain definitions, images for illustration, pronunciations, etymologies, inflections, usage examples, quotations, related terms, and translations of terms into other languages, among other features. It is collaboratively edited via a wiki. Its name is a portmanteau of the words '' wiki'' and '' dictionary''. It is available in languages and in Simple English. Like its sister project Wikipedia, Wiktionary is run by the Wikimedia Foundation, and is written collaboratively by volunteers, dubbed "Wiktionarians". Its wiki software, MediaWiki, allows almost anyone with access to the website to create and edit entries. Because Wiktionary is not limited by print space considerations, mos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history. It is consistently one of the 10 most popular websites ranked by Similarweb and formerly Alexa; Wikipedia was ranked the 5th most popular site in the world. It is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American non-profit organization funded mainly through donations. Wikipedia was launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001. Sanger coined its name as a blend of ''wiki'' and '' encyclopedia''. Wales was influenced by the " spontaneous order" ideas associated with Friedrich Hayek and the Austrian School of economics after being exposed to these ideas by the libertarian economist Mark Thornton. Initially available only in English, versions in other languages were quickly developed. Its combin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wiki
A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base. Wikis are enabled by wiki software, otherwise known as wiki engines. A wiki engine, being a form of a content management system, differs from other web-based systems such as blog software, in that the content is created without any defined owner or leader, and wikis have little inherent structure, allowing structure to emerge according to the needs of the users. Wiki engines usually allow content to be written using a simplified markup language and sometimes edited with the help of a rich-text editor. There are dozens of different wiki engines in use, both standalone and part of other software, such as bug tracking systems. Some wiki engines are o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best known as the hosting platform for Wikipedia, a crowdsourced online encyclopedia, it also hosts other related projects and MediaWiki, a wiki software. The Wikimedia Foundation was established in 2003 in St. Petersburg, Florida, by Jimmy Wales as a nonprofit way to fund Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and other crowdsourced wiki projects that had until then been hosted by Bomis, Wales's for-profit company. The Foundation finances itself mainly through millions of small donations from Wikipedia readers, collected through email campaigns and annual fundraising banners placed on Wikipedia and its sister projects. These are complemented by grants from philanthropic organizations and tech companies, and starting in 2022, by services income from Wikimedi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The European Library
The European Library is an Internet service that allows access to the resources of 49 European national libraries and an increasing number of research libraries. Searching is free and delivers metadata records as well as digital objects, mostly free of charge. The objects come from institutions located in countries which are members of the Council of Europe and range from catalogue records to full-text books, magazines, journals and audio recordings. Over 200 million records are searchable, including 24 million pages of full-text content and more than 7 million digital objects. Thirty five different languages are represented among the searchable objects. The content of the European Library was frozen on 31 December 2016, with no new updates after that date. History and concept The European Library of today has evolved from a number of earlier projects. Its starting point was in 1997 when the GABRIEL (Gateway and Bridge to Europe's National Libraries) project set out to establi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
