BIBLIOTECA DE CATALUNYA
Biblioteca de Catalunya is the national library of Catalonia in Barcelona . It has three million collections of books and covers an area of 8,820 square meters. The library founded as the Institut d'Estudis Catalans in 1907. Library was opened for the public in 1914 housed in the Palau de la Generalitat de Catalunya. The library was moved to Hospital de la Santa Creu de Barcelona which is an old building of 15 th century, after the acquiration of the library by the Barcelonan government. The library got a new name of the Spanish Civil war and was called as the Central Library by the new regime of Franco, moving to the safe place, where it is presently housed.
The library was approved by the Parliament of Catalonia as the National Library of Catalonia in 1981. The effort was taken by Llei de Biblioteques (libraries law). After declaring it the national library, duties were conferred up on, conservation of the library, reception, and distributing of the Catalan legal deposit. The library was expanded by constructing a new service building in 1988 renovating the Gothic ingredient of the buildings. Now the Biblioteca de Catalunya with other four Catalan libraries is digitalizing their books that come in the public domain. And all the digitalized books are available on the net.
The Biblioteca de Catalunya has taken a mission to preserve, collect and spreading of bibliographic production of Catalonia and also the ones that are related to the linguistic area of the Catalunya, to take care of its preservation. In the mission it has included the spreading of the heritage of bibliography when maintaining the position a worldwide seat for the consultation and research. The translation of the books on the National Library of Catalonia makes it clear their aim being the largest library of Catalonia and the Barcelona 's National Library, other four affiliate libraries of the national library have decided in joining the Book Search Library Project of the Google.
By doing digitization of the library's books, lakhs of people round the globe will have easy access to history of the Catalonian history and can trace the culture evolution through centuries in the texts that are centuries old. Libraries have to turn digital due to the advent of the communication revolution and the internet. Despite these entire obstacles libraries world over are doing well and are in continuous service for the public. Observing all these statistics national library of Barcelona have been modernizing their service with constantly adopting to the growing needs and the changing environment.
The Library in Barcelona having seen many changes since a century is now been appreciated for their great works and now going global. Now it is a challenging time for the libraries, with the electronic communication that is causing great threat to the traditional system of shelf stored books. Biblioteca de Catalunya has responded well to this challenge and is digitalizing the ‘out of copyright books'. A visit to the National Library of the Catalonia is surely a need for the ones who really want to know the true history of the city, heritage, culture and the people there.