A universal library is a

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

with universal collections. This may be expressed in terms of it containing all existing information, useful information, all books, all works (regardless of format) or even all possible works. This ideal, although unrealizable, has influenced and continues to influence librarians and others and be a goal which is aspired to. Universal libraries are often assumed to have a complete set of useful features (such as

finding aids A finding aid, in the context of archival science, is an organization tool, a document containing detailed, indexed, and processed metadata and other information about a specific collection of records within an archive. Finding aids often consist o ...

translation Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...

tools, alternative formats, etc.).

History

The Library of Alexandria is generally regarded as the first library approaching universality, although this idea may be more mythical than real. It is estimated that at one time, this library contained between 30 and 70 percent of all works in existence.Scan This Book!, ''New York Times Magazine'', May 14, 2006.
/ref> The re-founded modern library has a non-universal collections policy. As a phrase, the "universal library" can be traced back to the naturalist

Conrad Gessner Conrad Gessner (; la, Conradus Gesnerus 26 March 1516 – 13 December 1565) was a Swiss physician, naturalist, bibliographer, and philologist. Born into a poor family in Zürich, Switzerland, his father and teachers quickly realised his tale ...

's ''

Bibliotheca universalis ''Bibliotheca universalis'' (1545–49) was the first truly comprehensive "universal" listing of all the books of the first century of printing. It was an alphabetical bibliography that listed all the known books printed in Latin, Greek, o ...

'' of 1545. In the 17th century, the ideal of universality continued to be attractive. The French librarian

Gabriel Naudé Gabriel Naudé (2 February 1600 – 10 July 1653) was a French librarian and scholar. He was a prolific writer who produced works on many subjects including politics, religion, history and the supernatural. An influential work on library science ...

wrote:

And therefore I shall ever think it extremely necessary, to collect for this purpose all sorts of books, (under such precautions, yet, as I shall establish) seeing a Library which is erected for the public benefit, ought to be universal; but which it can never be, unlesse it comprehend all the principal authors, that have written upon the great diversity of particular subjects, and chiefly upon all the arts and sciences; ..For certainly there is nothing which renders a Library more recommendable, then when every man findes in it that which he is in search of ...

Fiction

Science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

has used the device of a library which is universal in the sense that it not only contains all existing written works, but all possible written works. This idea appeared in Kurd Lasswitz's 1901 story "The Universal Library" and

Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known bo ...

's essay "The Total Library" before its more famous expression in Borges's story " The Library of Babel". Such a library, however, would be as useless as it would be complete. A similar idea was a planet called Memory Alpha, (from the Star Trek episode " The Lights of Zetar") which was the Federation's "storehouse of computer databases containing all cultural history and scientific data it has acquired.". It has been commented that the Internet already approaches this state.The Internet and the revival of the myth of the universal library, Miroslav Kruk, ''Australian Library Journal'' 48, #2 (May 1999)
abridged version
available online. In

Discworld ''Discworld'' is a comic fantasy"Humorous Fantasy" in David Pringle, ed., ''The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy'' (pp.31-33). London, Carlton,2006. book series written by the English author Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat ...

Terry Pratchett Sir Terence David John Pratchett (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015) was an English humourist, satirist, and author of fantasy novels, especially comical works. He is best known for his '' Discworld'' series of 41 novels. Pratchett's first no ...

's fantasy world, all libraries in the multiverse are connected in "L-space", effectively creating a single semi-universal library.

Modern times

With the advent of cheap widely available digital storage, the ideal of universality, although still nearly impossible to attain, has become closer to being feasible. Many projects are now attempting to collect a section of human knowledge into one database. These projects vary in breadth and scope, and none are complete. Examples include digitization projects such as

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital libr ...

and

Carnegie-Mellon Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

's Universal library,

digital libraries A digital library, also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, or a digital collection is an online database of digital objects that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital documents, or other digital m ...

which are using

book scanning Book scanning or book digitization (also: magazine scanning or magazine digitization) is the process of converting physical books and magazines into digital media such as images, electronic text, or electronic books (e-books) by using an imag ...

to collect

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

works; The European Library, an integrated catalog for Europe's national libraries; the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best know ...

, which, using the

Wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...

system, is attempting to collect the breadth of important human knowledge under various open content projects such as

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

and

Wiktionary Wiktionary ( , , rhyming with "dictionary") is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary of terms (including words, phrases, proverbs, linguistic reconstructions, etc.) in all natural languages and in a numbe ...

; and some

shadow libraries A shadow is a dark area where light from a light source is blocked by an opaque object. It occupies all of the three-dimensional volume behind an object with light in front of it. The cross section of a shadow is a two-dimensional silhouette, ...

. However, many technical and legal problems remain for the dissemination of all possible knowledge on the Internet.

Current barriers

Current barriers to the construction of a universal digital library include: *Books have been lost. While the best-known lost library may be the Library at Alexandria, wars, civil strife and natural disasters destroy libraries and archives on a regular basis. Further losses are due to neglect. *Copyright: Many books are under

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

and current widespread business models require scarcity of books to remunerate authors. *Censorship: Most jurisdictions have prohibited at least some

banned books This is an index of lists of banned books, which contain books that have been banned or censored by religious authority or government. By country * Book censorship in Canada * Book censorship in China * List of books banned in India * Book ce ...

. * Unpublished manuscripts: If unpublished manuscripts are included in the definition of ''book,'' catching newly written manuscripts is likely to be a challenge. *Current digitization efforts are largely library-based, and so materials deemed outside the scope of libraries are very poorly represented.

References

{{Authority control Types of library

History

Fiction

Modern times

Current barriers

See also

References