National Library and Archives of Grenada Grenada Public Library (closed since 2011)

History and Founding

Library and information services in Grenada date to 1846, when the Legislative Council passed a bill for the establishment of a library and museum. A subscription library opened in 1853 and became a free public library in 1949. The main branch, also known as the Sheila Buckmire Memorial Library, served as the national library, national archives center, and administrative headquarters of the Department of Library Services within the Ministry of Education. The building housing the archives—an elegant Georgian structure originally constructed around 1720 on the Carenage in St. George's—was redesigned in 1985 using European Union funding to serve as the Grenada Public Library. No major maintenance was undertaken in the following decades.

Closure and Endangered Status

In September 2004, Hurricane Ivan severely damaged the building, flooding the archives and filling the vault with water. Despite some temporary repairs, the building was designated "not fit for human occupancy" and was vacated and closed on 18 July 2011. The building and its irreplaceable archival contents have been on the Heritage at Risk Register since 2004. A digitization project—the Grenada Endangered Archives Programme (EAP295), a collaboration between the British Library and the University of Manchester—was launched in January 2010 to digitize 132 volumes of deed records and local government correspondence from the 1760s onward. In 2025, the Grenada Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale spotlighted the restoration of the historic building as a focus of cultural diplomacy.

Collections and Holdings

Before closure, the archives held historical records dating to the 1760s, reflecting Grenada's history at the intersection of the British and French empires during the 18th century and through the transition from slavery to emancipation. The Grenada Public Library system encompassed approximately 11 community branches island-wide.