Libraries come in all forms, shapes and sizes, from your home library, to your community library, office library, school library, to the largest library in the world, but they all share one thing in common - each provides a gateway to infinite knowledge and that knowledge is power.

A growing body of evidence suggests that students’ academic success is linked to library usage, including improved student retention and an enhanced academic experience.

The oldest library in the world called The Library of Ashurbanipal is located in Nineveh in modern day Iraq. It was founded sometime in the 7th century B.C.

The largest library in the world: the Library of Congress in the United States, holds more than 170 million items in its collections and employs about 3149 staff.

Philanthropist Andrew Carnegie was a one-man library-funding machine. He donated $55 million ($1.6 billion in today’s dollars) between 1886 and 1919 to open 2509 libraries around the world. The Central Library in Castries, Saint Lucia also benefited from his donations.

Hong Kong has around 300 libraries for 7 million people.

The Hunter J. Francois Library was the first in the OECS to become fully automated.

Featuring over 32 million ebooks, the Internet Archive is the largest digital library ever created.

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

The largest book in the Library of Congress is a 5-by-7 foot book featuring color images of Bhutan. With support from Microsoft, a team of students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recorded the ancient life and culture in this South Asian country and made 40,000 digital images available to the Bhutan National Archives. A copy of the picture book was donated to the Library of Congress.

Librarians used to have to learn a specific style of handwriting known as librarian hand. The practice was prevalent in the late 1800s, when library pioneer Melvil Dewey—of the Dewey Decimal System fame—and other curators of early collections believed that legible handwriting was a must for card catalogs. The practice faded as typewriters grew in popularity.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans call a library their workplace. As of 2020, there were approximately 163,810 librarians; 30,810 library technicians; and 69,650 library assistants working in the United States.

The Most Overdue Book was 122 Years Late. In 2011, the Camden School of Arts lending library in Australia had their book returned to them. The book loaned was Charles Darwin’s Insectivorous Plants. Interestingly, the book was borrowed in 1889, breaking the record of the most overdue book in history with 122 years.

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Literacy is the most basic currency of the knowledge economy. — Barack Obama

At the dawn of the 21st century, where knowledge is literally power, where it unlocks the gates of opportunity and success, we all have responsibilities as parents, as librarians, as educators, as politicians, and as citizens to instill in our children a love of reading so that we can give them a chance to fulfill their dreams. — Barack Obama

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him. ― Maya Angelou

Libraries are a cornerstone of democracy—where information is free and equally available to everyone. People tend to take that for granted, and they don’t realize what is at stake when that is put at risk. ― Carla Hayden

The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library. — Albert Einstein

The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man. — T.S. Eliot

Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation. — Walter Cronkite

What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education. — Harold Howe

What in the world would we do without our libraries? — Katharine Hepburn

For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it. — Isaac Asimov

Librarians are committed to promoting lifelong learning in order to create a community of well-informed individuals. Librarians are catalysts to enlightenment for their communities. — Louise Capizzo

What is the value of libraries? Through lifelong learning, libraries can and do change lives, a point that cannot be overstated. — Michael E. Gorman

The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history. — Carl Thomas Rowan

The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world. — Rita Dove

The message is clear: libraries matter. Their solid presence at the heart of our towns sends the proud signal that everyone—whoever they are, whatever their educational background, whatever their age or their needs—is welcome. — Kate Mosse

Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark. — Germaine Greer

Libraries are the backbone of our education system. — Karin Slaughter

To be a librarian is not to be neutral, or passive, or waiting for a question. It is to be a radical positive change agent within your community. — R. David Lankes

The library, with its Daedalian labyrinth, mysterious hush, and faintly ominous aroma of knowledge, has been replaced by the computer's cheap glow, pesky chirp, and data spillage. — P. J. O'Rourke

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how. — Doris Lessing

It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home. — Elizabeth Kostova

Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark…. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed. — Germaine Greer

Book lovers will understand me, and they will know too, that part of the pleasure of a library lies in its very existence. — Jan Morris

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