A distributed library is a collection of materials available for borrowing by members of a group, yet not maintained or owned by a single entity. The library catalog is maintained on a database that is made accessible to users through the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

. This style of library is still in its infancy. Administrative software continues to be developed and distributed. An early example of this style of library (if not the first of its type) is the Distributed Library Project of the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

. While distributed libraries are being established in several cities worldwide, the San Francisco Bay Area library still only has a few hundred members. Another example, which takes a slightly different approach, is the Unlibrary. In this system, users are free to create communities of any size and scope, rather than a single citywide community. For instance a church might have its own community, with church members all able to borrow from each other. Users can also have private, invite-only groups. Another example is the digibruted library of Geneva.Digilioge: The Digibruted Library of Geneva
/ref> The name digibruted is coined from “Digital” and “Distributed”. This library is a digital construction that indexes books for local distribution. The difference from Unlibrary is that the books are freely given to readers, who act also as librarians, in a kind of peer-to-peer schema.

References

{{Reflist Library science Libraries by type Types of library

See also

References