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National library

A national library is a library specifically established by the government of a nation to serve as the pre-eminent repository of information for that country. Unlike public libraries, these rarely allow citizens to borrow books. Often, they include numerous rare, valuable, or significant works; for example, the Library of Congress includes a Gutenberg Bible. Some of the first libraries were national libraries; for example, the Library of Alexandria could be considered the national library of ancient Egypt. National libraries are usually notable for their size, compared to that of other libraries in the same country. Some states which are not independent, but who wish to preserve their particular culture, have established a national library, with all the attributes of such institutions, such as legal deposit.

History

The first national libraries had their origins in the royal collections of the sovereign or some other supreme body of the state.

Legal deposit and copyright

In some countries, such as the United Kingdom, one copy of every book published there must be sent to the national library (this is the principle of legal deposit) and five other libraries (Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, National Library of Scotland, Library of Trinity College and the National Library of Wales) are entitled to request a free copy within one year of publication.

Other countries, like the United States, do not follow this requirement. In addition to having a law requiring publishers to deposit books, those countries with legal deposits usually have many other incentives for a proper and speedy deposit, such as a tie-in with laws affecting copyright of the same documents, and/or a cataloguing- in- publication service.

National bibliographic control

One of the main goals of a national library is fulfilling their nation's part of the common international goal of universal bibliographic control, by ensuring the bibliographic control of all the books or book-like documents published in that particular country or talking about that particular country, in any way.

The first part of the goal is usually achieved through the means of legal deposit laws or (as is the case of the United States) by a host of different programs such as a cataloguing in publication service. By this service, the Library of Congress gives a complete catalogue entry of a book to any publisher who sends a final draft or some form of galley proof of a book currently in production. Other national libraries offer similar services or enforce mandatory practices similar to this.

The second part of the goal is achieved by thorough acquisition programs and collection development policies which target book markets in other nations, and which foster international agreements with other countries with national libraries who have national bibliographic control as one of their goals. Exchange and access protocols are defined permitting these countries to read each other's catalogues, and to standardize catalogue entries, thus making it easier for each national library to become aware of every possible published document which might concern their country.

International bibliographic control

Another one of the main goals of many a national library is the "export aspect" and the collaborative sides of the universal bibliographic control of all the books in the world. This is done by the exchanges and accords mentioned in the previous section, and also by fostering the creation of standard conceptual tools such as library classification systems and cataloguing rules. The most commonly used of these tools is the International Standard Bibliographic Description or ISBD. It applies to books and periodicals, but also has variants for other book-like material such as the ISBD (ER) for Electronic Resources or digital documents or the ISBD(A) for Antiquarian documents, which were published between the birth of printing but before the industrial era of publishing, which started in the 1820s.

See also

• List of national libraries