In the very center of Nicosia, next to the Square of Freedom and the former building of the municipality, there is a Cyprus National Library. The history of this institution has almost 100 years. However, now the library is in the media due to the deplorable state in which it was.
The Cyprus National Library was officially founded in 1987, but it did not arise from scratch.
In 1927, under the governor of Sir Ronalde Storrs (about him), the Cyprus Public Library was founded in Nicosia. A separate building was built for her at the Bastion of D’Aville (the library is still located in it). This is the building on the map.
Until 1968, the library was under the jurisdiction of the municipality of the capital.
In 1968, the parliament adopted a law that transferred the institution to the balance of the Ministry of Education. In the same year, the library moved to the building of the cooperative cash desk of Greek teachers on the avenue of Archbishop Makarios III (this is the very building in the style of modernism that was recently demolished, we wrote about it here). After the events of 1974, the institution returned to its original premises. Only in 1987 was the "Law on the Cypriot Library" was adopted, which gave it a national status.
Photo City.Sigmalive.com
The main tasks of the library are “the acquisition, processing, preservation and promotion of publishing products of Cyprus and materials related to Cyprus”. In other words, we are talking about an institution where all Cyprus publications, manuscripts, archives are stored. Also, foreign publications associated with Cyprus and the translations of Cyprus authors come here.
The library catalog is digitized, it can be seen here.
Meanwhile, Cypriot media publish photos of the current state of this such important institution. The building slowly becomes unusable due to humidity and has long requires repair. The fund is not protected in any way. Books are piled up one to another due to the lack of space. How much more the library can exist in such conditions and whether they reflect the importance of this institution for the whole country is a rhetorical issue.
The text was prepared based on Sigmalive, the Department of Modern Culture and Libraries.gov.cy.
