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The National Library of Belarus: a new stage of development

Library Information System Department of the Belarusian State University of Culture, director{at}nlb.by

The National Library of Belarus (NLB) is a major universal research library with the status of information, social and cultural centre of the Republic. For more than 85 years the National Library of Belarus has been keeping the national heritage of the Belarusian people and providing information services to the society. Construction work on the new building for the NLB started in 2002 and was finished in 2006. The new Library building in high-tech style is a visiting card for the city of Minsk. The upper part looks like a diamond placed in the centre of a stylobate (the lower part of the building). In the `diamond' the collection of about 8.4 million items is kept. The Library collections are of historical and cultural value and are the most complete containing materials published in or about Belarus. There are 19 reading halls (2,060 seats), staff offices, administrative and technical rooms in the stylobate. More than 20 modern engineering networks combined into a technical complex provide for the functioning and security of the library building. The local network consists of more than 100 servers and 1,400 personal computers (mainly `client terminals'). Electronic resources comprise 80 databases representing history, culture, the arts of Belarus, Chernobyl, national periodicals, dissertations, etc. The NLB is working on the retrospective conversion of its resources with a view to creating a digital library. The government of Belarus made great investments in the library building. A charitable account for the building was also opened and numerous companies, organizations and private people donated money. Almost every citizen of the country contributed to the creation of the new building which can thus be said to be truly a national project.

Key Words: National libraries • library architecture • library buildings • library design • information resources • information services

IFLA Journal, Vol. 33, No. 4, 327-334 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0340035207086062


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