Founded 1967 | ||
The Puerto Rico National Library (Spanish: Biblioteca Nacional de Puerto Rico) is the national library of Puerto Rico. It was officially opened on April 11, 1973. The library was created by Joint Resolution No. 44 of 1967, which was later repealed and superseded by Act No. 188 of 2003. The library is ascribed to the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture.
The Library shares its nineteenth century classical building, (at one time the Bacardi Rum flagship factory), with the General Archives of Puerto Rico. The Library's specialized collections include: the Dominican Collection of leather-bound religious books dating from the 16th-19th centuries, the Eugenio Maria de Hostos Collection, which includes 1,300 digitized manuscripts, and the private collection of Concha Meléndez, literary critic and former professor at the University of Puerto Rico.
The building is located between Old San Juan – the colonial city – and the Puerto Rico Convention Center, where the 77th World Congress of Libraries and Information of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions took place in 2011. It faces the Luis Muñoz Rivera Park and from its windows you can see the bay. It is fully air‐conditioned and has free Internet access. The Library and Archives share a 119 seat amphitheater at street level where each one has its individual side desk, with an unobstructed view.