depository library
- noun
- /dɪˈpɒzɪtəri ˈlaɪbrəri/
- Specialized
:
biblioteca de depósito
- The Houston Public Library serves as a depository library, providing access to a wide range of government publications.
Examples
-
Federal depository libraries play a crucial role in ensuring that government documents are freely available to the public.
-
It is the regional depository library for all federal and state documents and has extensive collections of material about Pennsylvania.
Blog text (28) -
The irony inherent in charges for access to the digital version of a hard copy resource freely available within the depository library system was not lost on participants in the discussion.
Academic text (2015) -
Another possibility would be for researchers and tribal officials to either make better use of existing depository libraries or to institute new depositories in a fashion that both protects their holdings and makes them accessible to interested tribal members.
Academic text (1991) -
As a depository library, it is committed to preserving congressional documents for public access.
Synonyms
636
1.0
A building where people borrow, read, and study books
264
4.1
A place that keeps old public records, letters, and photographs safe for a long time
3
9.2
A place with books you can read or borrow
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'depository' (a place where items are stored) modifies 'library' (a place for reading/borrowing), so a learner who knows both words can infer it is a library that stores or houses certain collections (e.g., official publications). This noun–noun compounding follows regular English patterns and is cross-linguistically transparent, making the phrase immediately understandable to B1 learners.
Etymology
Depository library comes from the image of officials bringing boxes of official documents and leaving them in a depository inside a library. So it means a library chosen to 'store' and make those government publications available for 'public use'.