National Libraries

Founded by act of Congress signed by John Adams, burned by the British in 1814, and rebuilt partly with Thomas Jeffersons library ...

Created in 1973 from the British Museum library departments, the British Library holds over 170 million items and acquires roughly...

Growing from the royal library of the French kings and open to scholars since 1692, the national library of France collects everyt...

Founded in Leipzig in 1912 as the Deutsche Bucherei and joined after 1946 by the Deutsche Bibliothek in Frankfurt, the unified Ger...

Founded in 1862 as the public library of the Rumyantsev Museum and known to generations as the Leninka, the Russian State Library ...

Established by Catherine the Great in 1795 as the Imperial Public Library, this was the first public library in Russia, open to re...

The largest library in Asia, founded in 1909 and opened in 1912, the National Library of China holds over 41 million items. Specia...

Modeled on the Library of Congress and founded in 1948 as a branch of the National Diet, Japans national library serves parliament...

Founded by King Frederik III in 1648 and opened to the public in 1793, Denmarks national library collects all Danish publications ...

Founded by Philip V in 1712 as the Real Biblioteca Publica, the national library of Spain holds more than 33 million items, includ...

Tracing its origins to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library of 1901 and established in its own right in 1960, the National Libra...

Formed in 2004 by merging the National Library of Canada with the National Archives, whose roots go back to the Dominion Archives ...

Taking over the collections of the Advocates Library under a 1925 act, the National Library of Scotland is a legal deposit library...

Founded by royal charter in 1907 on a hill above the seaside town of Aberystwyth, Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru collects the writte...

The national library of Sweden dates to 1661, when a royal decree required printers to deliver a copy of everything published to t...

The Austrian National Library grew from the Habsburg court library, whose earliest recorded acquisition, an illuminated gospel boo...

One of the two central national libraries of Italy, the Rome institution was founded in 1876 shortly after unification to collect ...

Founded on the bequest of scholar Antonio Magliabechi and opened to the public in 1747, the Florence national library became one o...

Established in 1798 as the national library of the Batavian Republic, the KB in The Hague collects everything published in the Net...

Founded in 1877 by act of Parliament and opened in 1890 in its Kildare Street building, the National Library of Ireland holds more...

Established in 1945 in Seoul and rebuilt after the Korean War, the National Library of Korea holds over 13 million volumes. Legal ...

The largest library in Latin America, the Biblioteca Nacional traces to the Portuguese royal library brought to Rio de Janeiro by ...

Founded in 1892 as the Bnai Brith library in Jerusalem, the National Library of Israel collects copies of everything published in ...

Housed in the baroque Klementinum complex, a former Jesuit college beside the Vltava, the Czech National Library began as a public...

Founded as the Public Library of Buenos Aires in 1810 at the urging of revolutionary Mariano Moreno, it became the national librar...

Created in 1777 by Viceroy Manuel de Guirior as one of the first national libraries in the Americas, the Biblioteca Nacional de Co...

The oldest and largest scholarly library in Finland began in 1640 as the library of the Royal Academy of Turku. After the great fi...

Established as an independent national institution in 1989, the library grew from collections of the University Library founded in...

Founded in 1928, the National Library of Poland inherited the ambition of the Zaluski Library, one of the first public libraries i...

The largest library in India by volume traces back to the Calcutta Public Library of 1836 and the Imperial Library formed in 1903 ...