A library is an organized collection of books, other printed materials, and in some cases special materials such as manuscripts, films and other sources of information. Collections can be print, audio, or visual materials, including maps, prints, documents, microform (e.g. microfilm/microfiche), CDs, cassettes, videotapes, DVDs, video games, e-books, audiobooks and many other types of electronic resources. The places where this material is stored include public libraries, subscription libraries, and private libraries; material can also be in digital form, stored on computers or accessible over the Internet. Libraries range in size from a few shelves of books in a small organization's library to collections of several million items in the larger national and academic libraries.

Anthony Grafton (sometimes Anthony T. Grafton) (born 21 May 1950) is a historian and the current Henry Putnam University Professor at Princeton University. He is also a corresponding fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the Balzan Prize. From January 2011 to January 2012, he served as the President of the American Historical Association.

Grafton was educated at Phillips Academy and the University of Chicago, where he took his A.B. and Ph.D. in rapid succession. He studied for one year at University College, London under the celebrated ancient historian Arnaldo Momigliano, and retains links with the Warburg Institute, University of London.

After a brief period teaching at Cornell's Department of History, he was appointed to a position at Princeton University in 1975, where he has subsequently remained. Since January 2007, he has been a co-editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas.

Anthony Grafton is noted for his studies of the classical tradition from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century, and in the history of historical scholarship. His many books include a profound study of the scholarship and chronology of the foremost classical scholar of the late Renaissance, Joseph Scaliger (2 vols, 1983–1993), a revisionist account (with Lisa Jardine) of the significance of Renaissance education (From Humanism to the Humanities, 1986), and, more recently, studies of Girolamo Cardano as an astrologer (1999) and Leon Battista Alberti (2000).

Sir Alfred Sharpe (19 May 1853 in Lancaster – 10 December 1935) was a professional hunter who became a British colonial administrator and Commissioner (a de facto Governor) of the British Central Africa Protectorate from 1896 until 1910 (it changed its name to Nyasaland in 1907). He had a hand in some dramatic events which shaped south-Central Africa at the onset of colonialism.

Sharpe started his administrative career in Fiji but went to Nyasaland as a hunter. In 1890 he was employed jointly by imperialist Cecil Rhodes and British Consul in Nyasaland Sir Harry Johnston on a mission to Msiri, King of Garanganza (mineral- and game-rich Katanga) which was, to Europeans, very remote. Rhodes wanted a mineral rights concession for his British South Africa Company (BSAC) and Johnston wanted a treaty accepting British protectorate status over his kingdom. The BSAC was already in North-Western Rhodesia and this would extend their territory further north. Katanga was known to have copper and was thought to have gold.