The National Library of Wales (Welsh: Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru) is the national legal deposit library of Wales, located in Aberystwyth. It is one of the Assembly Government Sponsored Bodies.
Cyril Evans, the library's centenary events co-ordinator expressed the view that "The library is considered to be one of the world's greatest libraries, and its international reputation is certainly something that all Welsh men and women are intensely … proud of".
Welsh is the main medium of communication within the organisation, and it aims to deliver all public services in English and Welsh.
In 1873 a committee was set up to collect Welsh material and house it at the University College, Aberystwyth. In 1905 the government promised money in its Budget, and the Privy Council appointed a committee to decide on the location of the two institutions. Aberystwyth was selected as the location of the library after a bitter fight with Cardiff, partly because a collection was already available in the College. Sir John Williams, physician and book collector, had also said he would present his collection to the Library if it were established in Aberystwyth; he also eventually gave £20,000 to build and establish the library. Cardiff was eventually selected as the location of the National Museum of Wales. The Library and Museum were established by Royal Charter on 19 March 1907.
Designed by architect Sidney Greenslade who won the competition to design the building in 1909, the building at Grogythan, off Penglais Hill, was first occupied in 1916. The central block, or corps de logis, was added by Charles Holden to a modified version of Greenslade's design. In 1996 a large new storage building was opened, and in recent years many changes have been made to the front part of the building. A new Royal Charter was granted in 2006.
The building houses over 4 million printed volumes, including many rare books such as the first book printed in Welsh (Yn y lhyvyr hwnn, 1546) and the first Welsh translation of the complete Bible (1588). It also keeps many rare and important manuscripts including the Black Book of Carmarthen (the earliest surviving manuscript entirely in Welsh), the Book of Taliesin, and a manuscript of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. As a copyright depository, it is entitled to receive a copy of every published work from the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. Its collecting policy is focused on Wales, Welsh-language and Celtic material.
The Library also contains the Welsh Political Archive and National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales. It also keeps maps, photographs, paintings, topographical and landscape prints, periodicals and newspapers. It also holds the largest collection of archival material in Wales.
In 2000, Peter Bellwood stole at least fifty antique maps from the library, which were sold to private collectors for £70,000. Arrested in 2004, he was jailed for four and a half years..
The Library has published a series of books about its history and collections, including manuscript catalogues, a bibliography of Welsh publications, Parish Registers of Wales, and academic studies of Gwen John, Kyffin Williams and others. The Library also publishes the National Library of Wales Journal.
Many of the most important manuscripts and books have been
digitized and made freely available to view on the library's
website in its Digital Mirror. The Library intends to have
digitized much of its image, sound and print collections by
2018.
The Library is currently digitizing the back-numbers of 50 journals relating to Wales, in Welsh and English, in the Welsh Journals Online[1] project funded by JISC. This will form the largest body of Welsh text on the Web, as well as allowing free access for all to scholarly articles on history, literature and science, and poems and book reviews. OCR of the page scans was undertaken to create TEI searchable text versions. The website will contain a total of 400,000 pages. After the project is complete, new issues of the titles will be added as they emerge from the embargo period agreed with the publisher.
The fifty titles will include: