The Lebanese National Library

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Home Page > The Library Today > Activities at the Library's Workshops > Collection Development

Introduction

Activities at the Library's Workshops

Collection Development Cataloguing Restoration of old documents Training

The Actors

The Future Building

History of the Future Library Building Construction

Mission

A team of three people work at the current department of collection development at the National Library. Since June 2008, and in the framework of the Revival Project, this team has worked on:

Defining selection criteria to establish a future acquisition policy;
Receiving and completing titles sent by publishers;
Monitoring the Lebanese intellectual production through bibliographic research;
Evaluating donations and adding them to the current collection of the Library;
Weeding the old collection.

Selection Criteria

The choice of books that will be added to the collection of the National Library is based on specific criteria, the most important being:

Books on Lebanon (regardless of place and language of publication);
Books published or printed in Lebanon (regardless of language of publication);
Books by Lebanese – or of Lebanese origin – authors (regardless of place and language of publication).

Books on the Middle East or any other Arab country whose subject is of interest to the Lebanese public;
Books on general subjects that are of interest to the Lebanese public;
Books by famous Arab and international authors and intellectuals.

These criteria apply to all other physical media (periodicals, CD, brochures...)

Bibliographic research

Through a bibliographic search, the collection development department establishes a list of titles not available in the Library's collection.

New acquisition

In addition to books coming from the Ministry of Culture and via the ISBN, there are thousands of other books that come from donations by authors, individuals and institutions.
See list of donors.