THE 1909 NATIONAL LIBRARY OF GUYANA

 By Dmitri Allicock

“The only thing that you absolutely have to know is the location of the library.”
 Albert Einstein

The National Library of Guyana formerly known as the Carnegie Free Library, the Georgetown Free Public Library and the Free Public Library, is the legal deposit and copyright library for Guyana.

Unlike many national libraries, it is also a public lending library and the headquarters of Guyana’s public library service, with branches extending throughout the country. Founded in 1909, the National Library of Guyana is situated on the corner of Church Street and Main Street in central Georgetown.   

The National Library of Guyana has its origins in an initiative by the Scottish-American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who donated a sum of £7,000 to enable the construction of a public library in Georgetown, British Guiana in 1907. The initiative was part of a Caribbean-wide library expansion organized and sponsored by Carnegie, and the National Library of Guyana was one of a number of Carnegie libraries that were built in the region in the early twentieth-century.

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