Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Formal Name: National
Library
Address:
Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Agargaon, Dhaka, 1207
Phone:
326572, 9118704
In 1972 the Directorate of Archives and Libraries established the Bangladesh National Library and the Bangladesh National Archives. Both were still small and developing in the 1980s, but the Bangladeshi government targeted the National Library as one of its core projects.
The Copyright Ordinance of 1974 mandated that the National Library receive copies of all books published in Bangladesh. (Only 616 books were published in Bangladesh in 1983.) The 75,000-volume collection consists of Bengali, Urdu. and English-language materials. The Library also collects journals and newspapers published in Bangladesh. No circulation of materials is permitted. From 1973 the Library published the annual Bangladesh National Bibliography in both English and Bangla.
The Archives of East Pakistan were housed in Lahore, in West Pakistan. Therefore, after independence the new country was left with virtually no official records. In the years after 1971 the National Archives surveyed materials from the divisional government offices around the country and trained archivists to prepare the materials. In November 1985 the National Library and the National Archives moved to a seven-story air-conditioned permanent building that provides 60,000 square feet of working space.
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