A library is a curated collection of sources of information and similar resources, selected by experts and made accessible to a defined community for reference or borrowing. It provides physical or digital access to material, and may be a physical location or a virtual space, or both. A library’s collection can include books, periodicals, newspapers, manuscripts, films, maps, prints, documents, microform, CDs, cassettes, videotapes, DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, e-books, audiobooks, databases, and other formats. Libraries range widely in size up to millions of items. In Latin and Greek, the idea of a bookcase is represented by Bibliotheca and Bibliothēkē (Greek: βιβλιοθήκη): derivatives of these mean library in many modern languages, e.g. French bibliothèque.

The first libraries consisted of archives of the earliest form of writing—the clay tablets in cuneiform script discovered in Sumer, some dating back to 2600 BC. Private or personal libraries made up of written books appeared in classical Greece in the 5th century BC. In the 6th century, at the very close of the Classical period, the great libraries of the Mediterranean world remained those of Constantinople and Alexandria.

Kiryat Ata (Hebrew: קִרְיַת אָתָא; also Qiryat Ata, Arabic: كريات آتا‎, Kiryāt ʾĀtā) is a city in the Haifa District of Israel. Also still known by its former name of Kfar Ata (Hebrew: כְּפַר עָטָּה), in 2017 it had a population of 57,518.[1]

The present town is built over the site of the Arab village Kufrata (Kufritta), a site surveyed, but not excavated. It is thought by archaeologists Mordechai Aviam and Dan Barag (1935–2009) to be the Capharatha (Greek: Καφαραθ᾽) mentioned by Josephus[2] in the Lower Galilee, one of several views tentatively identified for the site.[3] Archaeological surveys at Khirbet Sharta in the northeast part of the city revealed traces of habitation dating to the Bronze, Iron, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Mamluk eras.[citation needed] In 2010, an archaeological survey was conducted at the ancient site of Kiryat Ata by Hagit Turge on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA),[4] and in 2014 and 2016 by Orit Segal.[5]