Library cats are domesticated cats that live in public libraries worldwide. The association of cats with libraries continued from the Middle Ages up to the present day.
Contemporary library cats have also been featured in film and literature.
The relationship between cats and libraries is centuries old. [1] [2] [3] Monastic records from the Middle Ages indicate cats were kept in medieval monasteries in order to control rats that might otherwise eat valuable manuscripts. [4]
In 1745, Russian Empress Elisabeth published an order to transport cats to her court. The descendants of these cats now live in the State Hermitage museum. [5] During the nineteenth century, the British government compensated those libraries that housed cats, on the understanding that they kept rodents away from books. [4]
Library cats have appeared as characters in books and movies, [6] are immortalized in stone in front of their institutions, [4] and some are given positions on the institution's board. Many cats enjoy high-profile professional roles of marketing and public relations. [6]
The relationship between libraries and cats is at times contentious. In one case, there were attempts to remove a cat from a library, based upon concerns of patrons with allergies claiming violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. [7] Another considered removal was because of the library cat's reaction to service animals. [1] When a library cat was removed from its institution in Putnam Valley, New York, the institution suffered financially. Two members of the community were so upset about the removal that they deleted bequests to the library from their wills, producing an $80,000 loss in potential revenue. [1]
The Library Cat Society, a now defunct organization, was established in 1987 to encourage the establishment, respect, and recognition of library cats. The society included dozens of member libraries that exchanged information about their cats, and published a newsletter about them. [6]
The anthology Cats, Librarians, and Libraries: Essays for and About the Library Cat Society explored this relationship. The lives of library cats were studied by Gary Roma, a documentarian who produced a film entitled Puss in Books: Adventures of the Library Cat. [6] According to Roma's website, there are more than 800 cataloged library cats worldwide. The catalog indicates that many of them have since died.
Additionally, cats are often found in independent bookstores throughout the United States. [8] [9] [10]
Library cats have been used to befriend patrons, boost librarian morale, and inspire reading and literacy programs. [6] Cats can also be useful for marketing campaigns, and are frequently used to generate publicity for their libraries, particularly on social media. [11] The presence of a cat can create a relaxed environment and ease daily stress for patrons and librarians alike, [12] [13] but usually without the typically disruptive loud noises other animals (e.g., dogs) may produce. Cats' generally independent nature may also suit the intellectual environment of a library, as they are low-maintenance and may more readily suit the otherwise preoccupied intellectual personalities who frequent libraries. [14]
Dewey Readmore Books is perhaps the most famous library cat. He lived in Iowa's Spencer Public Library for 19 years. After his death, a book was published about him, [15] and later a number of follow-up books.
White Settlement City Council voted to remove library cat Browser from White Settlement Public Library in 2016, but reversed their decision after an international backlash. [16]
Scottish Fold cats Baker and Taylor solved a Nevada libraries rodent invasion while charming community patrons. Their quirky habits like sleeping in office supply boxes and dragging shoelaces across rows of books landed them the role of official mascots for the book distributing brand they were named after. [17]
A public library is a library, most often a lending library, that is accessible by the general public and is usually funded from public sources, such as taxes. It is operated by librarians and library paraprofessionals, who are also civil servants.
A librarian is a person who works professionally in a library providing access to information, and sometimes social or technical programming, or instruction on information literacy to users.
A research library is a library that contains an in-depth collection of material on one or several subjects. A research library will generally include an in-depth selection of materials on a particular topic or set of topics and contain primary sources as well as secondary sources. Research libraries are established to meet research needs and, as such, are stocked with authentic materials with quality content. Research libraries are typically attached to academic or research institutions that specialize in that topic and serve members of that institution. Large university libraries are considered research libraries, and often contain many specialized branch research libraries. The libraries provide research materials for students and staff of these organizations to use and can also publish and carry literature produced by these institutions and make them available to others. Research libraries could also be accessible to members of the public who wish to gain in-depth knowledge on that particular topic.
Charles Ammi Cutter was an American librarian. In the 1850s and 1860s he assisted with the re-cataloging of the Harvard College library, producing America's first public card catalog. The card system proved more flexible for librarians and far more useful to patrons than the old method of entering titles in chronological order in large books. In 1868 he joined the Boston Athenaeum, making its card catalog an international model. Cutter promoted centralized cataloging of books, which became the standard practice at the Library of Congress. He was elected to leadership positions in numerous library organizations at the local and national level. Cutter is remembered for the Cutter Expansive Classification, his system of giving standardized classification numbers to each book, and arranging them on shelves by that number so that books on similar topics would be shelved together.
OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was founded in 1967 as the Ohio College Library Center, then became the Online Computer Library Center as it expanded. In 2017, the name was formally changed to OCLC, Inc. OCLC and thousands of its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the largest online public access catalog in the world. OCLC is funded mainly by the fees that libraries pay for the many different services it offers. OCLC also maintains the Dewey Decimal Classification system.
Rita Mae Brown is an American feminist writer, best known for her coming-of-age autobiographical novel, Rubyfruit Jungle. Brown was active in a number of civil rights campaigns and criticized the marginalization of lesbians within feminist groups. Brown received the Pioneer Award for lifetime achievement at the Lambda Literary Awards in 2015.
The United States National Agricultural Library (NAL) is one of the world's largest agricultural research libraries, and serves as a national library of the United States and as the library of the United States Department of Agriculture. Located in Beltsville, Maryland, it is one of five national libraries of the United States. It is also the coordinator for the Agriculture Network Information Center (AgNIC), a national network of state land-grant institutions and coordinator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) field libraries.
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions, in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCLC member libraries collectively maintain WorldCat's database, the world's largest bibliographic database. The database includes other information sources in addition to member library collections. OCLC makes WorldCat itself available free to libraries, but the catalog is the foundation for other subscription OCLC services. WorldCat is used by librarians for cataloging and research and by the general public.
Library collection development is the process of systematically building the collection of a particular library to meet the information needs of the library users in a timely and economical manner using information resources locally held as well as resources from other organizations. "According to is a dynamic self perpetuation cycle or process and consists six definable stages namely,community analysis, selection policies, selection, acquisition, weeding and evaluation.
Readers' advisory is a service which involves suggesting fiction and nonfiction titles to a reader through direct or indirect means. This service is a fundamental library service; however, readers' advisory also occurs in commercial contexts such as bookstores. Currently, almost all North American public libraries offer some form of readers' advisory.
Samuel Swett Green was a founding figure in America’s public library movement.
The Jacksonville Public Library is the public library system of Jacksonville, Florida, United States. It primarily serves Jacksonville and Duval County merged areas, and is also used by the neighboring Baker, Nassau, Clay, and St. Johns counties. It is one of the largest library systems in Florida, with a collection of over three million items. A division of the city government, the library has the third largest group of city employees, after the city's fire department and sheriff's office. There are twenty branches and a main library in the system.
The Texas A&M University Libraries support the teaching, research, and outreach missions of Texas A&M University through leadership in acquiring, managing, and delivering information in an environment that fosters learning and inquiry. In particular, Texas A&M is nationally and internationally recognized for many research collections, including:
Dewey Readmore Books was the library cat of the Spencer, Iowa, Public Library. Having been abandoned in the library's drop box in January 1988, he was adopted by the library and gained local attention for his story shortly thereafter.
The Kropyvnytskyi Regional Universal Research Library (RURL) is one of the oldest research libraries in Ukraine and the largest in the region. The library was named after D.I. Chyzhevskyi. It has universal books and documents on traditional and modern media. It houses collections of precious and rare publications and is the depositary of publications on local lore.
In the post-Stonewall era, the role of libraries in providing information and services to LGBTQ individuals has been a topic of discussion among library professionals. Libraries can often play an important role for LGBTQ individuals looking to find information about coming out, health, and family topics, as well as leisure reading. In the past 50 years, advocate organizations for LGBTQ content in libraries have emerged, and numerous theorists have discussed various aspects of LGBTQ library service including privacy concerns, programming, collection development considerations and librarian/staff education needs, as well as special services for juvenile and teen patrons.
Dewey-free refers to library classification schemes developed as alternatives to Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). Dewey-free systems are often based on the BISAC subject headings developed by the Book Industry Study Group, and are typically implemented in libraries with smaller collections. Instead of using numerical notation to indicate a document's shelving location, Dewey-free systems organize documents alphabetically by natural language words. Dewey-free systems have been implemented in both public and school libraries.
Paul North Rice was an American librarian who served as Chief of the Reference Department of the New York Public Library, Executive Secretary of the Association of Research Libraries and President of the American Library Association.
The University Library at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign comprises a network of physical and digital libraries. It provides resources and services to the university's students, faculty, staff, and the broader academic community.
Browser is an American library cat that lives in White Settlement Public Library, near Fort Worth, Texas, United States. He is a grey tabby cat. In July 2016, Browser was evicted from the library by the local municipality, provoking an international backlash that resulted in a re-vote, and a unanimous decision permitting him to stay.
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