Homepage / Visit us / A library guide

A library guide

The library of the National Archives (NA) is a specialized archival library having a large collection of books of a multithematic character relevant to the administrative, cultural and scientific role and importance of the NA and its predecessors. It contributes to the overall development of science, education and culture by collecting, processing, as well as making informative documents accessible.

Librarian and information activities are aimed at professionals and the scholarly general public.

Bibliographic and documentary activities of the library are aimed at the needs of archival work and the very archives as a body of state administration in the Czech Republic.

The library builds and makes accessible a collection of home and foreign library documents from the field of archives, administration and law, history, auxiliary historical sciences, informatics, i.e. from the fields of social sciences and only exceptionally from natural or technical sciences according to the needs of specific workplaces of the NA, and from the documents of a general-purpose character.

Keeps and makes accessible

• historical library collections ( i.e.libraries of the defunct offices, institutions, schools, associations, religious orders, and the like) ;
• books from editorial archives of the defunct editing and publishing institutions;
• private book inheritances and family libraries;

Keeps, builds and makes accessible

• collection of home and foreign newspapers from 1722 to the present;
• collections or fonds of other types and kinds of documents as e.g. statutes and annual reports from schools, museums, institutions, enterprises, associations and other social organizations, then codes of law, gazettes, journals, and the like;

Provides basic (standard) library and information services.

Participates in creating a present and retrospective bibliography in the field of archivistics and makes other bibliographic inventories of literature from the library fond for the needs of personnel and researchers of the NA, as well as other library users. Documentary databases are correspondingly created.

Practices international exchange of publications with the foreign archives and the similar institutions in the scope of the NA.

Fulfills other assignments emerging from legislative duties or from collaboration with libraries in the Czech Republic ( nationwide registering and a database of foreign literature, foreign periodicals, interlibrary loan service, participation in the nationwide projects, etc.)

A circle of library users

The NA library provides services to the citizens of the Czech Republic older than 15 years and foreign nationals, i.e.foreign researchers. Rights and duties of the reader are stated in the Library Rules. A reader has to follow them.

The Library Rules distinguish several categories in the reader´s service (depending on the types of fonds and kinds of documents, provided loan services and kinds of borrowings – in-house or home, offering consultations and/or search services) :

• the broadest range of services is provided to the employees of the NA, owing to the function of the library as an archival library ( in-house and home borrowings, loans from other libraries via interlibrary loans / MS and MMS /, doing searches );
• for the scholarly general public (and other Czech citizens):
  • enables borrowings in-house with the possible exceptions for home borrowing from the parts of library A fonds and Library B;
  • provides consultation services;
• for the foreign researchers ( foreign nationals) :
  • lends books only in-house;
  • provides consultation services;

You can order literature also by phone – ordered publications are reserved for 14 days after a certification of reservation has been sent or after an orally settled date of preparation. All users of the NA library have free services. Reprographic and other copying services are charged in accordance with the valid price-list of services provided by public archives of the Czech Republic.

Services of the NA library

The NA library provides readers basic(standard) library and information services :

1) lending services

• in-house borrowings in research rooms of the NA, where the reference libraries can be used free of charge;
• home borrowings (outside the library );
  note: there is limitation (it is strictly forbidden to take home old prints, newspapers and journals, official reports and codes of law, reference literature, literature from historical NA library fonds and literature from reference libraries in the research rooms as well as from the reading room of the NA library), that means, other documents from the fond of library A and library B devoted to home borrowings form a small amount of 500,000 volumes in the NA library ; home borrowing to registered readers from other libraries ( within the Czech Republic, abroad through the services of the National Library) obeys the regulation set by the Ministry of Culture to administer the Act No.257/2001 Coll., on libraries and conditions for exercising public library and information services, in the part concerning lending via interlibrary services (MS) and international interlibrary services (MMS) and Library Rules:
  • intrastate interlibrary loan service – by mail;
  • international interlibrary loan service – upon request of the National Library;
• borrowings from other libraries through interlibrary services for registered readers of the NA library are provided only for employees of the NA;

2) reprographic services are provided only from the documents belonging to the holdings of the NA library and with respect to copyright. Reprographic work or other kinds of copying services are charged in accordance with the valid price list of services offered by the public archives.

3) information services

Oral and written pieces of information of bibligraphic, factographic and reference character are given to those who ask for them but are differentiated according to categories of services for the readers:

• advisory and consultation service (for basic information) on operating library services, catalogues, fonds and use of library, principles of providing services, ordering of publications, their reservation, etc. – for all readers ;
• bibliographic – documentary service on the basis of a precisely formulated request of the reader (library user). The NA library gives basic (standard) information from the bibliographic and reference fond of the NA library – for all readers;
• search service – on the basis of the precisely formulated request for the search, the library provides this service only for official purposes, and only from its primary or secondary fonds, as well as its catalogue and documentary databases or acquired databases of the documents ;
• self-service of automatic searches from accessible catalogues and documentary databases of the NA library via Intranet NA is accessible for all readers ( in the lending rooms and research rooms of the NA are databases of the NA library for reference only, if you ask the librarian on duty, you can have the result of the search printed);
• public internet;

4) publicity service

• news service and lists of acquisitions;
• issueing of inventories to greater groups of library fonds;
• organizing of exhibitions ( participation in exhibitions arranged by the NA);

5) special services

• cooperation in answering some of the requests concerning archival fonds in the scope of record useage;
• providing lending services and bibliographic and documentary information from the library collections which is part of archival fonds or are closely bound with them (e.g. archives of preprints from publishing houses)under the conditions in force for the inspection of records.

Top of page»