The National Library of Iran is located in Tehran

Tehran

Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...

, Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

, with several branches are scattered throughout the city.

Prior to the library's official inauguration in 1937, other libraries existed that performed the same function informally. The first prototype of a national library

National library

A national library is a library specifically established by the government of a country to serve as the preeminent repository of information for that country. Unlike public libraries, these rarely allow citizens to borrow books...

 in Iran was the Library of Dar al-Funun College

Dar ol-Fonoon

Dar al-Funun , established in 1851, was the first modern institution of higher learning in Persia.-Introduction:Founded by Amir Kabir, then the royal vizier to Nasereddin Shah, the Shah of Iran, Dar al-Funun originally was conceived as a polytechnic to train upper-class Persian youth in Medicine,...

, established in 1851. In 1899, another library called the "Nation's Library" was inaugurated in Tehran

Tehran

Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...

.

The present National Library of Iran incorporates many different collections from older libraries, including many rare and valuable manuscript

Manuscript

A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

s. The central main branch is located in north central Tehran and is still under its final stages of construction.

The new building is specially designed to combine different faculties of the library in a single platform. The library by itself is over 90,000 m², one of the largest library campuses in the Middle East. It encompasses 5 separate halls, each hall dedicated to a different faculty, including Humanities, Social Sciences, Law, Science and Science Education, and Health Studies.

It took over the publishing of the Iranian National Bibliography (Ketab Shenasi Melli Iran), with annual publications between 1962 and 1966, a break for two years, and then monthly and quartly since 1969.

See also

• Central Library of Astan Quds Razavi
  Central Library of Astan Quds Razavi
  The Central Library of Astan Quds Razavi is a large library in Mashad, Iran. Established before 1457, it holds over 1.1 million volumes. It is an international center for Islamic research, containing numerous manuscripts and rare works of antiquity of Islamic history.The library has 35 branches:*...
  
  
• List of national libraries
• International rankings of Iran

External links

Videos

• Iran's National Library (PressTV free documentary)