All I wanted to do was go back inside to the library and read a book. I used to spend all my time reading books, or watching television. It was safe. Nobody ever was hurt or teased or looked stupid while reading books or watching television. Kathryn Magendie, Sweetie
But I loved the library simply because it was a library. I love libraries. I like reading, but I love libraries. Being surrounded by books makes me feel safe, the way some people need trees or mountains around them to feel secure. Not me – nature’s not what I cling to. I cling to books. Emily Wing Smith, Back When You Were Easier to Love
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. Marcus Tullius Cicero
I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library. F Scott Fitzgerald, 1896-1940, The Great Gatsby, 1925
I’m not comfortable being preachy, but more people need to start spending as much time in the library as they do on the basketball court. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
I don’t know what your childhood was like, but we didn’t have much money. We’d go to a movie on a Saturday night, then on Wednesday night my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book. Robert Redford
I’m really a library man, or second-hand book man. John le Carre
As a child I spent a lot of time at the library. Tracy Chapman
My father had inklings of my cultural aspirations. He would take me to the library, things like that. But he wasn’t one of those dads who had read George Orwell and was a member of the Communist party. We had no books at home. Gary Kemp
It was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to which money could be applied so productive of good to girls and boys who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it as the founding of a public library. Andrew Carnegie
There are times when I think that the ideal library is composed solely of reference books. They are like understanding friends; always ready to meet your mood, always ready to change the subject when you have had enough of this or that. J Donald Adams, The New York Times 1 April 1956
Library
Here is where people,
One frequently finds,
Lower their voices
And raise their minds. Richard Armour, Light Armour
Come, and take choice of all my library,
And so beguile thy sorrow. William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus IV i 34
My library was dukedom large enough. William Shakespeare, The Tempest I ii 109-110
Today, if you have an Internet connection, you have at your fingertips an amount of information previously available only to those with access to the world's greatest libraries – indeed, in most respects what is available through the Internet dwarfs those libraries, and it is incomparably easier to find what you need. Peter Singer
For thousands of years mankind has dreamt of a giant library that contained every book in the world. Every human being would be able to visit this library. In the twenty-first century technology could make that dream a reality. Storyville: Google and the World Brain, BBC 2013
Man’s attempt to build a library that contained all knowledge began in the third century B.C. in Ancient Egypt. ibid.
In the late ’90s, pioneers began to combine the scanner, the book and the Internet to create giant digital libraries. ibid.
Google scanned around 10 million books. 6 million of these were books in copyright – scanned without asking the authors’ permission. ibid.
Alongside Google and the Internet Archive, several large internet corporations have been implementing their own book scanning projects. Among them: Amazon, Microsoft and in China, Baidu. ibid.
Authors’ Guild files lawsuit against Google, alleging copyright infringement. ibid.
Google face lawsuit from American publishers. ibid.
Google have agreed to pay $125 million in a settlement. ibid.
The Settlement gave Google an exclusive right to sell scans of all out-of-print but in-copyright works. These books are sometimes known as Orphans. ibid.
In September 2009 the US Congress held a hearing into competition and monopoly in the digital books market. ibid.
In August 2009 an American court began Fairness Hearings to consider whether it should approve the Google Book Settlement. No cameras were present. ibid.
Judge Chin rejected the Google Books Settlement. The Authors Guild and Google remain in dispute. ibid.
The Authors Guild is suing Google for up to $2 billion in damages for scanning books in copyright. ibid.
Google continues to scan out-of-copyright books in agreement with major libraries. They are also showing snippets of copyrighted books in agreement with many publishers. ibid.
Now government and libraries in Europe and America are working together to build their own public and free digital libraries. ibid.
The Great Alexandrian Library: a treasure trove of almost a million scrolls and documents. Mysteries of the Bible s3e7: Who Wrote the Bible? National Geographic 1996
Section 215 of the Patriot Act says that Federal authorities can go to a librarian or bookshop owner and demand to know what a patron has read. Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
A library has become something to aspire to. Dr Janina Ramirez, Illuminations: The Private Lives of Medieval Kings 3/3, BBC 2012
Fresh in the memory of many in the empire was the story of the destruction of the original library of Alexandria. Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Science & Islam: The Language of Science, BBC 2009
Yet Alexandria, in the Province of Egypt, still retained much of its splendour ... As well as the greatest Library on Earth. The Library was not only a cultural symbol but also a religious one, a place where the pagans worshipped their ancestral gods. Agora 2009 starring Rachel Weisz & Max Minghella & Oscar Isaac & Sami Samir & Manuel Cauchi & Ashraf Barhom & Michael Lonsdale & Rupert Evans & Homayoun Ershadi et al, director Alejandro Amenabar
After the storming of the Library many pagans converted to Christianity and Alexandria enjoyed a time of peace. Hypatia continued her teaching and research, while her former disciples occupied important posts among the social elite. ibid.
Alexandra Library: What will happen the next time the Mob comes? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey: Unafraid of the Dark XIII, Fox 2014
‘Ah college years, those were the days. Pure freedom ... leaving home for the first time ... the parties ...’
‘What about the tutorials, the lectures, the large building with all the books called the library?’
‘Is that what those were?’ Gerry blithely replied. E A Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
The only other building is a spanking-new library courtesy of Plan Columbia ... All the library needs now is to open (padlocked like the UNDP), a few books (there were none) and, most importantly, some people who can read (a rare species in Ciudid Bolivar). Misha Glenny, McMafia
In those days there was no money to buy books. I borrowed books from the rental library of Shakespeare and Company, which was the library and bookstore of Sylvia Beech at 12 rue de l’Odeon. On a cold windswept street, this was a warm, cheerful place with a big stove in winter, tables and shelves of books, new books in the window, and photographs on the wall of famous writers both dead and living. Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast p21
On our way from Romton to Edbury I went into a public library, and, though Paddy did not want to read, I suggested that he should come in and rest his legs. But he preferred to wait on the pavement. ‘No,’ he said, ‘de sight of all dat bloody print makes me sick.’ George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
We call ourselves a rich nation, and we are filthy and foolish enough to thumb each other’s books out of circulating libraries! John Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1849