The National Library of Bolivia is nearly as old as the republic itself. Its story runs parallel to Bolivia's own — founded in the first months of independence, formalized across the nineteenth century, and later joined with the National Archive to become the single institution known today as the Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia (ABNB).
A Library Born With the Republic
The institution traces its origins to July 1825, when a public library was created in Chuquisaca — the colonial name for Sucre — amid the sweeping educational reforms enacted by the liberators of the newly independent nation. From the outset it was conceived as a public good: a place where the documentary record of the young republic could be gathered, preserved, and consulted.
Through the 1870s the library came to be recognized as a national institution, and its officials were increasingly referred to as national librarians. That status was made official by a Supreme Decree of 19 June 1872, which formally established the National Library. From this period the collection grew steadily, absorbing books, brochures, newspapers, and periodicals, in part through legal-deposit provisions requiring that publications produced in the country be lodged with the library.
The National Archive
The archival side of the institution was created somewhat later. During the government of General Narciso Campero, an Act of 18 October 1883 established what was then called the General Archive of the Nation, drawing together the accumulated administrative and judicial records of the colonial and early republican state. The archive's holdings include the funds of the Audiencia de La Plata (1561–1825), the records of the Cabildo of Potosí, and the deeds of the great silver enterprise that once made Potosí one of the richest cities on earth.
Together these two bodies of material — the printed heritage of the library and the manuscript heritage of the archive — form a continuous record stretching from the middle of the sixteenth century to the present. According to standard reference accounts of the country's institutions, such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the joint collection is among the most important in the Andean region.
One Institution, Joint Direction
For much of their early history the library and the archive operated as related but distinct bodies. Since 1935 they have functioned as a single institution under joint direction, the arrangement that survives today. The oldest single document reported in the collection is a royal provision dating from the 1540s, and the library holds more than a thousand titles printed between 1530 and 1804, covering theology, philosophy, law, and history.
Stewardship and Funding
The institution's modern administration reflects Bolivia's effort to protect its heritage through stable stewardship. An act of 1986 brought the Central Bank of Bolivia into the funding of the library, and the bank established a cultural foundation to oversee that support. By a law of the republic in 1995, responsibility passed to the Fundación Cultural del Banco Central de Bolivia, which administers the ABNB to this day and has undertaken the construction of a new, purpose-built facility for the collections in Sucre.
A Living Record
Like every national archive, the ABNB faces the perennial challenges of incomplete legal deposit, the fragility of old paper, and the need to make its holdings accessible without endangering them. Yet its significance is beyond question. The recognition of its documentary funds by UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme — discussed on our Memory of the World page — confirms that what is preserved in Sucre belongs not only to Bolivia but to the shared memory of humankind. To understand the material itself, see our overview of the collections and the National Archive.