Defining Libraries

When we were working on a statement to accompany the Library’s name and logo for our Donor Wall, we did the Librarian thing and searched all sorts of quotations on the subject of books and libraries. Some were too long, some were too short, and some just weren’t what we were looking for (sounds a little like the “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” story?).
We settled on one, governed by the amount of space allocated.
In the process, we undertook an intellectual exercise about what a library is. Recently, reading Reinventing Knowledge: From Alexandria to the Internet, by Ian F. McNeely, I found our exercise explained far more intellectually than I could. McNeely says there are at least three ways to tell the story of the library:
First, as an institutional approach—the story of how libraries were founded and funded; emergence of printing; collecting and storing.
Second, as an intellectual approach—the rationale for collecting books; organizing and managing the collection.
Third, as a political approach—the attempt to bring the civilization of an empire to its expanding populations.
As the content of libraries changed from papyrus, to printed books, to the various media of now and the future, libraries continue to serve their community for all of the above reasons.