Municipal Library of Prague, part one: overview

There is so much to say about our afternoon at the Municipal Library that I am splitting it into two posts.


We began with a very interesting lecture by the director of the library, Dr. Tomáš Řehák. The municipal library is the public library, and in Prague, the library was founded in 1891 with the central library being built in 1928 (interestingly, the central library building is one of only three library buildings in Prague that were built to actually be a library - the others are the National Library and the National Technical Library). The Prague Municipal Library has 42 branches and three mobile libraries, and serves a population of 1.2 million people.

There are 500 employees at the library, and 2,250,000 items in the collection. For the past three years, the number of active card holders has increased by 10,000 each year, and there are currently 170,000 active card holders with 2,150,000 annual visits. The library has a (relatively small) budget of 12 million dollars. It costs about three dollars to obtain a library card.



This sculpture contains 8,000 books and is in the library entrance.

This is their book cart!


Part of the children's area, where they do story times and workshops (this is for you, Miss Mary!). They also have a Wii in this area which children (and their families) can use for a half hour at a time.