Right. Let's get this over with. You wanted to know about a building full of books. Try to keep up.
National Library of the Czech Republic
| Baroque library hall in the National Library of the Czech Republic |
|---|
| 50°5′14.62″N 14°25′2.58″E |
| Location |
| Type |
| Established |
| Collection Size |
| Other information |
| Director |
| Website |
The National Library of the Czech Republic (Czech: Národní knihovna České republiky) serves as the central library for the Czech Republic, a monumental task it performs under the watchful, and one assumes, bureaucratic eye of the Ministry of Culture. Its primary nerve center is lodged within the historic Clementinum, a sprawling baroque complex in the heart of Prague that has seen more history than you've had hot dinners. This is where roughly half of its collection resides, soaking in the atmosphere. The other, less glamorous half is warehoused in the district of Hostivař, because even priceless knowledge needs a practical storage solution.
With a staggering collection of around 6 million documents, it stands as the largest library in the country. As of the latest count, it tolerates about 20,627 registered readers. While the shelves are, predictably, dominated by Czech texts, the library's vaults also safeguard older, more exotic materials from places like Turkey, Iran, and India—remnants of forgotten empires and far-flung curiosity. As if that weren't enough responsibility, it also shoulders the burden of housing books for Charles University in Prague, linking its fate to the nation's oldest and most prestigious academic institution.
History
The library’s origins are, like most things in this part of the world, layered and complicated. It all began in the 13th century with a Studium generale school, founded by the Dominican monastery in Prague's Old Town. This nascent center of learning, complete with its own collection of manuscripts, was eventually absorbed by the university in the 14th century. A simple, academic beginning.
Then came the Jesuits. In 1556, monks of the Jesuit Order—never a group to do things by halves—constructed a boarding school on the very same grounds, naming it the Clementinum. By 1622, their influence had grown to the point where they were administering Charles University itself. Naturally, they consolidated all their libraries, and those of the university, within the Clementinum's walls, creating a formidable bastion of knowledge and religious doctrine.
This arrangement persisted until the inevitable political shift. After the suppression of the Jesuits, the university was secularized, becoming a state institution in 1773. Four years later, in 1777, Empress Maria Theresa decreed its library the "Imperial-Royal Public and University Library." The name is a mouthful, but it signifies a crucial pivot from a private, religious collection to a public resource, albeit one still tied to the crown. Even when the university fractured along ethnic lines into Czech and German institutions in 1882, the library, remarkably, remained a single, shared entity—a quiet testament to the unifying power of the written word, or perhaps just bureaucratic inertia.
The 20th century brought yet another series of identity crises. In 1918, with the birth of Czechoslovakia, the library was taken over by the new government. The Slavonic Library (Slovanská knihovna) was established in 1924 and found its home in the Clementinum by 1929, where it remains an autonomous but integral part of the National Library. In 1935, another rebranding: it became the "National and University Library" (Národní a univerzitní knihovna). That same year, a law enforcing legal deposit was formalized, cementing a practice that had been in place since 1781, when Prague's printers were first required to submit copies of their works.
The darkness of the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 saw the closure of Czech universities and colleges. The library, however, persisted. It remained open, albeit under the clipped, sterile name of "Municipal and University Library" (Zemská a univerzitní knihovna), a silent holdout in a city under siege.
Post-war, the Communists brought their own flair for centralization. In 1958, all of Prague's major libraries were forcibly merged into one monolithic entity: the State Library of the Czechoslovak Republic (Státní knihovna ČSR).
Finally, in 1990, with the fall of the old regime, the library shed its previous skins and adopted its current, and hopefully final, name: the National Library of the Czech Republic. To handle the ever-expanding collection, a new, modern storage facility, the Central Depository in Hostivař, was opened in 1996. A necessary, if unromantic, addition to a centuries-old institution.
Collections
Among the treasures gathering dust—or, more accurately, resting in climate-controlled safety—are some of the most precious medieval manuscripts in existence. The library is the custodian of the Codex Vyssegradensis, a stunning 11th-century coronation gospel book, and the Passional of Abbes Kunigunde, a 14th-century illuminated manuscript that is as much a work of art as it is a religious text. These aren't just old books; they are survivors, artifacts that have witnessed the rise and fall of kingdoms.
Digitisation
The library's foray into digitisation began in 1992, a collaboration with the Czech company AiP Beroun. This wasn't just a local project; they were pioneers, doing foundational work in creating digital standards at a time when most of the world was still figuring out what the internet was for. This early start allowed them to participate in numerous European projects, further refining standards for digitizing fragile manuscripts and antique prints. They were so ahead of the curve that they supported pilot projects for the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme, with the program's very first pilot project in 1993 originating from this library.
Their efforts didn't go unnoticed. In 2005, the library received the inaugural Jikji Prize from UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme, a formal acknowledgment of their relentless work in dragging ancient texts into the digital age. In the first 13 years of the project, they managed to digitize and make 1,700 documents publicly available, a monumental achievement.
This digital content is accessible through two primary portals: Manuscriptorium (manuscriptorium.com) and Kramerius (kramerius5.nkp.cz). Manuscriptorium is a vast repository containing over 111,000 manuscripts and old prints. The National Library itself has contributed nearly 84,000 of these, with the rest coming from a network of 138 partners across 24 countries.[citation needed] Since the launch of Europeana in 2008—the European Union's digital platform for cultural heritage—Manuscriptorium has been a key contributor, feeding its digitized treasures into this larger ecosystem and other specialized academic portals used by services like EBSCO, ProQuest, and ExLibris.
In a move that speaks volumes about modern archival realities, the library also partnered with Google. This collaboration has focused on digitizing additional old prints and early 19th-century books from the Slavonic Library. As of October 2018, Google had digitized over 177,000 books from the collection.[citation needed] These texts are now searchable through the Google Books platform, as well as the library's own catalogues, ensuring that these fragile pieces of history are accessible, even if it means collaborating with a tech giant.
The Kramerius digital library handles the more modern—relatively speaking—documents, specifically those published after 1800. It includes over 2,000 periodical series, and its collection of digitized books is constantly expanding, particularly thanks to mass digitization efforts under the National Digital Library project.[citation needed]
Proposed new building
In 2006, a moment of optimism. The Czech parliament approved funding for a new, modern library building on the Letná plain, a prime piece of real estate situated between the Hradčanská metro station and Sparta Prague's football ground, Letná stadium. An international architectural competition was held, and in March 2007, a jury selected a daring, futuristic design by Czech architect Jan Kaplický. The project, nicknamed "the Blob" or "the Octopus," was slated for completion in 2011.
It was not to be. Later that year, the project became mired in political controversy. High-profile officials, including Prague Mayor Pavel Bém and then-President Václav Klaus, raised objections to the design and its proposed location. The debate raged, a classic clash between avant-garde vision and conservative taste. By February 2008, the project was stalled, with the matter punted to the Office for the Protection of Competition to determine if the tender had even been won fairly. It was a perfect storm of political opposition and procedural nitpicking.
The final nail in the coffin came later in 2008. The Minister of Culture, Václav Jehlička, announced the project's termination, citing a ruling from the European Commission that the tender process had not been legally sound. And just like that, the future was cancelled. Kaplický's "Blob" remains one of Prague's great what-ifs, a ghost of a building that never was.
Incidents
A building that has stood for centuries is bound to have its share of mishaps. The library was hit by the devastating 2002 European floods. Staff scrambled to move documents to higher levels to save them from the rising waters, a frantic race against nature. History, it seems, is vulnerable to plumbing.
In July 2011, another water-related crisis occurred when flooding in a section of the main building forced the emergency removal of over 4,000 books. Then, in December 2012, a fire broke out. Fortunately, it was contained, and no one was injured. Just another reminder that the preservation of knowledge is a constant, wearying battle against entropy, incompetence, and the elements.