“A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.” Lemony Snicket

“Reading is important.
Books are important.
Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise themselves among the stacks.)” – Neil Gaiman

Learn how libraries are organized

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”  – Mark Twain

Read stories about books and libraries

“Ben wished the world was organized by the Dewey decimal system. That way you’d be able to find whatever you were looking for.”  – Brian Selznick, Wonderstruck

Learn about the famous Dewey decimal system

Play some Dewey decimal games online

People have been keeping written records of ideas and information for thousands of years.  Archeologists have discovered a collection of 30,000 clay tablets at an ancient site in modern Iraq. Historians know that the famous Alexandria Library in ancient Egypt had over 400,000 scrolls and that by 400 C.E., there were already 28 public libraries in the city of Rome! But it wasn’t until the 1800s that free public libraries became popular.

Read more fun facts about libraries

“The library in summer is the most wonderful thing because there you get books on any subject and read them each for only as long as they hold your interest, abandoning any that don’t, halfway or a quarter of the way through if you like, and store up all that knowledge in the happy corners of your mind for your own self and not to show off how much you know or spit it back at your teacher on a test paper.” – Polly Horvath, My One Hundred Adventures

Discover the secrets of people who love reading

“Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.” – Ray Bradbury, science fiction writer