Azerbaijan National Library is one of the large well-known national libraries and bookkeepers not only in Europe-in the Caucasus, but also is popular all over the world. The library, celebrating this year its 85th anniversary was founded in 1922 and its official opening was on May 23, 1923.
In 1939 the library was named after M.F.Akhundov, the great academic, playwright and publisher. Currently there are 25 sections and 26 sectors at the National Library. 4 million 513 thousand publishing materials are covered maintenance in the fund of the library. It is not fortuitous that Haydar Aliev, the famous leader, estimating the science and the culture highly, the President of our country visited our library 4 times (July 06, 1995; March 04, 1996; 5-20 November 1997) and presented books more than 100 from his personal fund.In 2004, according to the order of the Cabinet of Ministers the Library has been awarded the status of “National Library”, so that is the very high estimation for its activity.
The National Library is realizing state policy in the field of library, collecting and preserving the national publication, the plays by the Azerbaijani authors and the literature about Azerbaijan, published abroad National cultural treasure and the state bookkeeper.There is much improvement on activities of some departments of national library at last years.Since 2005 the specialized department of the foreign literature has being started to carry out the international books exchanging, and got relations with 60 more countries of the world.As a result of these works, the materials and manuals, prepared by the National Library are placed at the site of the library and before the publishing are issued for using by the employees.
Since 2003 the National Library has being started to introduce they automated system of management. With this purpose it was used the VTLS-Virtua.The program providing of system was realized by VTLS Cooperation of the USA-organization working special automated programs for libraries. In 2005, the National Library was the member of the International Organization of the European National Libraries Conference. Azerbaijan was the second country after Russia being a member of this organization among the post-soviet countries.This organization unites 54 libraries of the Europe. Uniting in the unique system of the European libraries will give possibilities to create the all-European electron catalogue.