National Library of Guinea Bibliothèque Nationale de Guinée

History and Founding

The National Library of Guinea (Bibliothèque Nationale de Guinée) was created in 1958, the same year the country gained independence, as a renamed branch of the Institut Français d'Afrique Noire (IFAN). By 1961 the library had a trained librarian—the only one in the country at the time—along with new personnel and a government appropriation. By the end of 1967 its resources included 11,000 volumes and 300 current periodicals. Despite periods of growth, the library suffered from chronic underfunding. In 1986 it was shut down as part of government austerity measures that also dismissed 45,000 civil servants, scattering its collection of an estimated 40,000–60,000 volumes across various buildings. It has since been revived and currently has its own building in the museum complex in the Sandervalia quarter of Conakry. In March 2015, the first stone was laid for a new building near the Gamal Abdel Nasser University of Conakry.

Collections and Holdings

The library's collection includes First Republic theses, academic journals, newspapers, and monographs. It holds a unique complete collection of Guinea's Syliphone recording label, with all 159 vinyl recordings transferred to compact disc format—an important resource for the history of Guinean music and media. The collection also includes journals from the Sékou Touré era, hundreds of sociopolitical and anthropological studies written by French colonial administrators in the pre-independence era, university theses from the Touré era, significant holdings of Présence Africaine, publications by the IFAN, copies of Horoya Hebdo (Guinea's weekly newspaper), volumes of Sékou Touré's collected works, photographic material dating to the 1920s, and both volumes of the "Livre blanc."

Access and Usage

The library is located in the Sandervalia national museum complex in Conakry. Holdings are not yet fully catalogued electronically, though a scanner is available for researchers. Dr. Cheick Sylla Baba has served as Director General since 1998.