Brief Introduction

Tribhuvan University Central Library (TUCL), now considered as the biggest library in Nepal, was established in 1959 A.D. along with the university with the sole purpose of helping the university in attaining her objectives. At the time of its establishment, TUCL had a meager collection of only few hundred books. Ever since then, the collection kept on growing and, by now, after 61 years of its establishment, the collection exceeds 410,000 volumes of documents consisting of books, bound periodicals, theses, audio books and other documents. It’s located at the university’s central campus premises in Kirtipur, at five kilometers distance to the South-west of Kathmandu city.

Its present building was designed by a Swiss architect Mr. Robert Weise and was built in 1967 in cooperation with the Govt. of India. Nearly after two decades and half, an annex building (nearly 3 times bigger than the original one) was constructed considering the increasing number of documents and its ever-growing number of clienteles. Many philanthropists and bibliophiles have contributed to this library to grow into its present size. It is considered as the largest library in the country not only in terms of building/space but also in terms of collection, technical manpower, number of members, daily visitors and mainly the variety of services being rendered.

Library clienteles:

Even though TUCL is an academic library established to support the teaching, study and research needs of the university campus, Kirtipur, it has extended its services beyond the limit of the university campus. Apparently, having no good public libraries in Kathmandu valley and respecting the needs & sentiments of all the concerned, TUCL does also offer memberships even to the general public as well as to the foreigners residing in Nepal. The massive Earthquake that struck Nepal in April/May 2015 had severely affected the library in many ways, however, TUCL has not stopped offering the services to all its members, visitors, the university administration and even to the general public despite the scourge of the Earthquake.

Brief history

Nepal Government’s Central Library:

The Nepal National Education Commission, appointed by the Nepal Govt. in 1954, recommended in its report as saying “A strong central library should be established as a center for study and research”. As a result, an agreement between the Government of Nepal and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was signed on April 30, 1957 to establish a Central Library in Kathmandu. Consequently,  a library named Central Library was established at Lall Durbar (somewhere near the Yak & Yeti hotel), Kathmandu on June 1, 1959 with the effort of Mr. John L. Hafenrichter, the then USAID education advisor in Nepal. The newly established Central Library was a public library and the library’s technical works used to be done under the guidance and technical expertise of Dr. E.W. Erickson, an American librarian who later became the director of Michigan University Library, USA.

The T.U. Library:

In the same year, a month later in July 1959, Tribhuvan University Act was passed and the University itself came into existence. Classes began to be run in old buildings at Tripureshwor. This same year, the T.U. Library was established. This library, from the very beginning suffered from meager number of books collection, inadequate space, lack of technical manpower and other facilities. At that time it is said the library had less than one thousand books that were kept piled on the ground one  atop another and only some were shelved in stacks made out of bricks and planks of wood in a very limited space.

Merger of the two libraries:

After three years, in 1962, the Central Library at Lal Durbar was handed over to Tribhuvan University Library in accordance with a decision of the Govt. of Nepal, and thus, after the merger of the 3 years old Central library at Lall Durbar (having a collection of 15,000 volumes of books) with the Tribhuvan University Library (having a collection of 7813 volumes) it came to be known as Tribhuvan University Library (TUCL) and the collection reached 24,813 volumes of books. Since 1977 (2033 B.S.) it began to be called as T.U. Central Library. By now, mid March, 2020 (Chaitra 2076), the library’s collection has reached more than 410,000 volumes of books and other documents.

Objectives

As mentioned earlier, the main objective of TU Central Library is to help its mother institution i.e. Tribhuvan University in attaining her objectives. Besides this, being the biggest and considered as the most organized & reliable library in the nation, TUCL shoulders the responsibility of attaining the following objectives too:

• To preserve the intellectual heritage of the nation.
• To promote information literacy, readership and life-long learning.
• To provide materials both in conventional and e-formats and furnish an environment conducive to study & research.
• To promote resource sharing, networking and exchange of databases.
• To provide documentation and information services and bring out relevant publications.
• To help develop scholarly standards, guidelines and best practices in libraries.
• To promote professional expertise in information management and conduct trainings in librarianship for the T.U. librarians and library staff.