What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Library vs Collection - What's the difference?

library | collection |

As nouns the difference between library and collection

is that library is an institution which holds books and/or other forms of stored information for use by the public or qualified people. It is usual, but not a defining feature of a library, for it to be housed in rooms of a building, to lend items of its collection to members either with or without payment, and to provide various other services for its community of users while collection is a set of items or amount of material procured or gathered together.

library

Noun

(libraries)
  • An institution which holds books and/or other forms of stored information for use by the public or qualified people. It is usual, but not a defining feature of a library, for it to be housed in rooms of a building, to lend items of its collection to members either with or without payment, and to provide various other services for its community of users.
  • A collection of books or other forms of stored information.
  • An equivalent collection of analogous information in a non-printed form, e.g. record library
  • (computer science) A collection of software subprograms that provides functionality, to be incorporated into or used by a computer program.
  • (card games) The deck or draw pile
  • A collection of DNA material from a single organism or relative to a single disease
  • Derived terms

    * Borgesian library * interlibrary * librarian * librarial * library and information science * library assistant * library catalog * library hand * library science * mobile library * record library * public library * school library

    collection

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A set of items or amount of material procured or gathered together.
  • *
  • Secondly, I continue to base my concepts on intensive study of a limited suite of collections , rather than superficial study of every packet that comes to hand.
  • * (William Whewell)
  • Collections of moisture.
  • * Dunglison
  • A purulent collection .
  • Multiple related objects associated as a group.
  • * , chapter=5
  • , title= Mr. Pratt's Patients , passage=Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. […] When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.}}
  • The activity of collecting.
  • (topology, analysis) A set of sets.
  • A gathering of money for charitable or other purposes, as by passing a contribution box for donations.
  • (obsolete) The act of inferring or concluding from premises or observed facts; also, that which is inferred.
  • * (John Milton)
  • We may safely say thus, that wrong collections have been hitherto made out of those words by modern divines.
  • (UK) The jurisdiction of a collector of excise.
  • A set of college exams generally taken at the start of the term.
  • Derived terms

    * collection agency * collection plate * minicollection * take up a collection