The National Library in Warsaw has undergone a thorough modernization. The facility will be opened for readers on February 24 – on the anniversary of the library’s reactivation by Ignacy Mościcki, the President of the Republic of Poland in 1928.
After modernization, the reading rooms are three times larger. In modern and functional spaces, the Library will make available 10 million volumes from its warehouses and 3.5 million digital objects from polona.pl. Four times more books will be available in the reading rooms with free access for readers.
In the Press Reading Room users will be able to browse the latest issues of newspapers and magazines, using the Internet and digital resources. People who value sunlight will be able to use the Lower Reading Room under the skylight, accessible by a spiral staircase with an elevator inside.
Reading Room of Novelties offers the latest publications updated daily. The Encyclopedia and Dictionaries Reading Room is located next to it. The Upper Reading Room is the largest place, which allows free access to shelves, with almost complete collections of history and fiction. From there, guests can go to the Załuski Reading Room, named after the founders of the Library – Andrzej and Józef Załuski.
Manuscripts, old prints and cimelia will be made available in the only closed reading room – the Perpetual Resource Reading Room. Users can also use the Cartographic Reading Room, the Music Reading Room and the Sound and Audiovisual Recordings Reading Room.
Noble materials were used in the new interiors. Copper on the ceilings, steel, wood and stone made the rooms visually more attractive, but they did not lose their modernist character. A space without architectural barriers and four internal gardens have been designed, with specially selected vegetation that changes within the seasons of the year.
One of the first national libraries in Europe and the first in Poland was opened to readers in 1747. It was one of the largest publicly accessible libraries in Europe. After the death of its founders, it was taken over by the state as the Library of the Republic of Poland. In 1780, the Seym granted her the right to receive a compulsory copy of each publication from Poland.
The National Library was liquidated twice and largely destroyed. After the loss of independence in 1795, it was taken by Tsarina Catherine II to St. Petersburg, where it became the founding collection of the tsarist library. Partially it returned on the basis of the Treaty of Riga in 1921, it was the most valuable collection of the National Library, reactivated in the Second Polish Republic until the Library was set on fire by the Germans after the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.
Arkadiusz Słomczyński