Can you explain what is meant by 'library' in the context of software development?

In software development, a library is a collection of ready-made functions, classes, and modules that can be used in your code to solve common tasks without implementing them from scratch. Libraries help accelerate development, enable code reuse, and standardize approaches.

For example, in Node.js, a library might provide functions for working with HTTP requests, data processing, or database interaction. The developer includes the library and calls its methods instead of writing all the functionality themselves.