Librarywide

Librarywide, often written with a hyphen as library-wide, is an adjective describing something that applies to the entire library or library system rather than to a single component, item, or branch. It signals scope that spans across all parts of a library’s operations or software components.

In library science, librarywide policies or standards affect all branches of a library network and across services such as lending, cataloging, digital access, and security. Examples include a librarywide privacy policy, a unified cataloging standard adopted across branches, or a digitization initiative that covers the entire collection. Librarywide decisions typically require governance structures, coordination among stakeholders, and consideration of the diverse communities served by the library system.

In software engineering, library-wide refers to configuration, behavior, or resources that are global to a software library. A library-wide configuration option might control logging, error handling, or feature flags for all modules built on the library; a library-wide event system disseminates events to all components; and library-wide tests exercise the entire library rather than individual modules. This usage contrasts with module-local or package-local scope.

Benefits of library-wide scope include consistent behavior, centralized management, and easier maintenance. Drawbacks can include tighter coupling, greater risk from a single change, and potential performance overhead if global resources are overused.

See also terms such as library scope, global variables, policy, cataloging standards, and interlibrary loan.