Thursday, October 11, 2012

Today is...Snapshot Day!

Snapshot Day: A Day in the Life of Ohio Libraries

A library is a building, room, or set of rooms, containing a collection of books for the use of the public or of some particular portion of it, or of the members of some society or the like; a public institution or establishment, charged with the care of a collection of books, and the duty of rendering the books accessible to those who require to use them (OED definition 1.b).

The first libraries were archives of cuneiform tablets, discovered in temple room in what is now Iraq, dating from 2600 BC.

The largest and most significant library of the ancient world was the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. As far as historians can tell, it was originally organized by Demetrius of Phaleron, a study of Aristotle sometime during the reigh of Ptolemy I.

One of the oldest libraries in Europe is the Bodleian Library, the main research library of Oxford. It was established in 1602 and now contains approximately 11 million items including four copies of the Magna Carta, one of only 42 copies of the Gutenberg Bible, and Shakespeare's First folio.

Heterick Memorial Library is organized by the Dewey Decimal Classification system, a library classification systems created by Melvil Dewey in 1876.

Melvin Dewey advocated for spelling reform, focusing on simpler spelling. As a result, he wrote without using all the letters and "simplified" words, going as far as to change the spelling of his last name to Dui. An example of how he wrote: "someone is troubld becauz we fail...but we chek up with great care all these sugjestions".

Why is the library important to you? Stop by the library to fill out a comment card and possibly get your picture taken for Snapshot Day!

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