Indeed. See also from qepHom 2016: postal service QIn tum post office (building) QIn tum qach The {QIn tum} has thousands of branches, sometimes dozens in the same city, but one over-arching agency or bureaucracy. It seems obvious that {QIn tum qach} refers to a specific building. Why are people confused by this?
a private library would probably be just one building, and thus wouldn't need a separate "agency".
Depends on what exactly a {tum} is. Does it refer to only government {qum} agencies or any kind of administration {loH}? Here at the University of Chicago Library (where I work) consists of several specialized library buildings scattered over the south side of Chicago, but one central organization housed in the largest of them. --Voragh DloraH:
In the cities I've lived in, the public library system had more than one building. There were several paq nojwI' qach scattered around the city. I think paq nojwI' tum refers to that overall collection of buildings that work together to make up the "Public Library" that most cities have. I think he included "public" in parentheses because I'm think a private library would probably be just one building, and thus wouldn't need a separate "agency".
On Thu, 2016-12-29 at 18:49 +0000, Terrence Donnelly wrote:
To me, the {paq nojwI' qach} is the literal building housing the books and the staff, while the {tum} refers to the entity more abstractly. If you said, "I'll check the Library and see if they have that" and you used your phone app or the on-line catalog, it would be the {tum} you are accessing, but not the {qach}. If you are talking about visiting the library, I don't see much difference. I also don't see how {tum} implies "public", but that's how it's glossed, so be it.
On Thu, Dec 29, 2016 at 9:30 AM, Steven Boozer <sboozer@uchicago.edu> wrote:
Also from qepHom 2016:
paq nojwI' qach library (building) (n) paq nojwI' tum library (public) (n)
Do we know what the difference between libraries is?
-- ~Michael Roney, Jr.