G.ZULBAYAR /230/ 2011.10.12

?SUBJECT;BRITISH OF LIBRARY

PAPER BOOK

British Library /History/

National library of Great Britain, formed by the British Library Act (1972) and organized by July 1, 1973. For much of the 20th century its holdings were divided among the British Museum library (with some 12 million volumes) and several other buildings, but in 1997–98 a new complex was opened in London, England, near St. Pancras Station in order to unify its vast collections. The British Library holds more than 25 million printed books as well as hundreds of thousands of periodicals, microfilms, rare manuscripts, and titles in electronic form. Its special offerings include the Oriental and India Office Collections (transferred from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1982), the National Sound Archive (formerly the British Institute of Recorded Sound, incorporated into the library in 1983), printed music, a map library, and philatelic materials.

British musuem Library /breifly/ The British Museum library was long housed in the main building of

the British Museum, in Bloomsbury, London. The museum (with its library) was founded in 1753 on the basis of the collections of Sir Hans Sloane; Edward and Robert Harley, earls of Oxford; and Sir Robert Cotton. In 1757 George II presented to the library what is now known as the Old Royal Library (books collected by the kings of England from Edward IV to George II), which brought with it the right to a free copy of all books published in the United Kingdom. The museum library grew to become one of the world’s largest and finest with the addition of the second royal library, that of George III, which was presented by George IV in 1823. The centrepiece of the British Museum library was the huge, round, dome-ceilinged Reading Room (see photograph), which was designed by Sydney Smirke in association with the librarian Anthony Panizzi and completed by 1857. Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf, and many other illustrious writers and thinkers, both British and foreign, did their work in that room.

British Library /action/

As the library holdings grew in the 20th century, additional space was acquired in Bloomsbury, and annexes were opened at Bayswater and other London locations. Many of the newspaper collections were moved to Colindale (now in the borough of Barnet in northern London), where a newspaper repository (1905) was replaced by the full-service British Museum Newspaper Library (1932). During the air raids of World War II, some 225,000 volumes were destroyed at the British Museum, and tens of thousands of newspapers were burned at Colindale. Repairs to damaged buildings were carried out in the 1950s and ’60s. In 1962 the National Lending Library for Science and Technology was established at Boston Spa, Yorkshire. The Newspaper Library became part of the British Library in 1973, but in the late 1990s its collections were relocated to the main St. Pancras library.

Plans for a central library complex were first requested in the 1960s from the architects Sir Leslie Martin and Colin St. John Wilson, but these designs, and others in 1973, met with resistance from local residents and various politicians concerned over the preservation of existing buildings and the expenditure of public funds for the project.

Land was purchased beside St. Pancras Station in 1976, and new plans by Wilson were officially approved two years later. Money for construction was held up until 1982, however, and the project was plagued by further shortages of funding and political support. During construction its architecture was decried by some—most notably by Charles, prince of Wales—but other critics applauded its modern style and its conveniences. At the time of its royal opening in 1998 the library complex had nearly 1,200 seats for readers (about one-third the number originally planned). Google’s plan to digitize the books of five major libraries had worldwide implications.

Libraries

The year 2005 again offered proof that libraries were not immune to matters that shaped society. Google, the ubiquitous Internet search service, in late 2004 had announced plans to digitize books from the collections of five great research libraries in the U.S. and Britain. The Christian Science Monitor compared the project to Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in its importance to the dissemination of knowledge. A test service, Google Print, was launched as digitalization efforts progressed, but in August 2005 Google suspended the operation owing to copyright disputes with publishers and publishing associations. In September a number of authors filed suit on the basis of copyright issues.

Google’s bold venture, however, sparked international ramifications. Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany wrote to his counterparts in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland to propose that all these countries begin digitizing the contents of their libraries. Without this effort, he wrote, “this heritage will perhaps not occupy its deserved place in the scholarship of the future.” The director of the French Bibliothèque Nationale publicly worried about “the risk of America reinforcing its crushing domination of future generations’ understanding of the world.” Worldwide, digitalization of library materials was drawing attention. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) awarded a six-year, $308 million contract to Lockheed Martin to build NARA’s Electronic Records Archives. An op-ed article in the Toronto Star urged the Canadian government to begin work on digitizing much of the content of the national library, and libraries everywhere, notably the British Library (BL), were digitizing their unique materials and mounting them on the Web.

British Library

/Raeding room/ At the Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Ger., a previously unknown aria composed by

Johann Sebastian Bach was discovered. A 27-year campaign by the Italian city of Benevento resulted in an order for the BL to surrender a 12th-century illuminated missal believed to have been looted during World War II. The BL was also facing the loss of the world’s oldest Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus, to a monastery in Egypt. The Codex, which had been housed in the monastery since the 6th century, was removed in the 19th century and purchased by the BL in 1933 from the Imperial Library in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg).

A provision of the USA PATRIOT Act that allowed federal police agencies to demand circulation records and placed a gag order on library workers was hotly debated in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate as Congress considered renewal of the law. Despite stiff resistance from a coalition of liberals, libertarians, and librarians, the renewals passed, and a conference committee was to attempt to resolve differences in the respective versions. Before that could happen, however, a federal judge lifted a gag order on a Connecticut library that sued the government over the constitutionality of the gag order permitted by the PATRIOT Act. Government lawyers promptly and successfully appealed the ruling, and the gag order was reinstated.

Savings books

In August the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions convened in Oslo as an expanded and renovated National Library of Norway was inaugurated. In Bahrain the Shaikh Isa National Library opened, and in Iran the inauguration of a new National Library occasioned a diplomatic incident following the detainment at the airport and subsequent deportation of the editor of American Libraries magazine, the membership magazine of the American Library Association. In the U.S. the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum opened in Springfield, Ill.

Four public libraries opened in small communities in Nepal through a partnership of individual villages with the U.S.-based READ literacy-advocacy organization. Over the past 15 years, some 35 public libraries had opened in that country. In Imphal, India, protesters torched the Central Library of the state of Manipur. The group that took credit for the act also threatened newspapers and publishing companies that used Bengali script, the language of the library’s 145,000-volume collection.

Accomplishment

Hurricane Katrina devastated libraries along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Public libraries in Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss., and in the parishes surrounding New Orleans were destroyed. A branch library in Pass Christian, Miss., was described simply as “gone.” In New Orleans the first floor of Dillard University’s library was under water, and the entire Southern University campus might have to be rebuilt. A card catalog in the school’s library had drawers exploded by water-swollen cards. Tulane University and the New Orleans Public Library’s main branch, however, seemed to have escaped major damage. In most areas of the affected region, roofs were ripped off and library collections destroyed. In many cases library workers who evacuated could not learn the fate of their workplaces, and across the country evacuees inundated libraries to communicate with loved ones and file applications for aid from FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency). The Houston Public Library set up temporary libraries in some emergency shelters, and libraries across the country collected books to send to the devastated area. Recovery of libraries and library services, however, would likely take years; the impact of Hurricane Rita was still undetermined.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded $1 million to Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, a nongovernmental organization that used boats to take Internet access and computer training to impoverished villages in Bangladesh. In The Netherlands a public library instituted a program to “lend out,” for 45 minutes of conversation in the library’s coffee shop, people from minority groups. Among these people available to be “checked out” were Roma (Gypsies), Muslims, gays, lesbians, noncriminal drug addicts, and asylum seekers

АВOUT LIBRARIES

Libraries The word library comes from the Latin word liber, meaning ‘book’.

This is a place where information in print books, manuscripts, periodicals and musical scores and in other forms is collected and arranged to serve people of all ages and interests.

Libraries appeared in ancient times in Egypt, Assyria, Greece and Rome. Perhaps the most famous library of that early day was at Alexandra. It was found by Ptolomy I.

Ptolomy ordered the librarians to collect all Greek texts as well as manuscripts in other languages from every part of the known world. By the middle of the 1st

century BC there were about 700,000 papyrus rolls in the library.

The first libraries in Russia were established in medieval monasteries. Public libraries were opened in the 19th century at the Academy of Sciences and Moscow University.

The library today is a centre for all kinds of communications: printed, pictured, recorded, and even electronically stored. People go to the library to read, look, listen, search, inquire, relax, discuss, learn, and think.

Libraries can be found in many places. There are libraries in small towns and large cities, and there are libraries in schools, universities, colleges.

The largest and best known libraries in the world are: the British National Library in London, the library of Congress in Washington and the Russian State Library.

The national libraries of different countries keep in touch and exchange books and information.

Many people have books at home. These are the books of their favourite authors dictionaries and reference books and the like. My family also has a home library. It was my grandfather who started to collect it at the beginning of this century. There are over two thousand books in it . The authors I like most of all are Chekhov, Bulgakov, Fitzgerald, Cortasar and others.

Most libraries have a professionally educated staff whose first duty is to help you. Librarians also select and purchase books and other materials, organize materials so that you can easily use them, answer questions about facts, people, events, or advise you how to find the information you need.