National Library,Q8

The Kuwait National Library is an initiative by the Kuwaiti government to invest in projects to keep its culture,tradition and history alive. Situated in Qibla, on Arabian Gulf Street, between Al-Ma'ari Street on the east side and the Sadu House and the National Museum on the west side, it is a massive building which overlooks the Sief Palace Complex.

The working hours of the library is from 8am to 1pm and again from 4pm to 9pm from Sunday to Thursday. So you can plan to visit according.  


KNL is exerting great efforts to develop its works, trying to ensure full collections of Arab and foreign book references which have been missed because of the Iraqi invasion.The Library inventory includes data-bases on CDs and online of books and full articles from international periodicals. However, these collections include the following:


• Printed collections:

o The main hall collection, which comprises books and general collections which are available for readers and researchers.

o Private collections, these collections are now kept away of reach, and include the private individual libraries which were presented to the KNL by the heirs of their original owner intellectuals and men of culture; these include:

• Abdulla Al-Noury private library

• Abdul Razzaq al-basir private library

• Ahmad Al-Bishr Ar-rumy private library

• Mulla M. Saleh private library

• Ahmad Al-Jassar private library

• Eng. Ahmad Z. Al-Ansari specialized private library

• Abdu Aziz Hussain private library.

o The General Ma’aref library collections: hosts all the books between 1936 – 1960. They are mostly rare collections of books most of which were printed before 1940; up till now 7500 volums of its materials are counted.

o The Kuwait collections: include books with Kuwaiti authorship, published inside or outside Kuwait or were written about the Kuwait.

o Official Publications (Governmental or semi Governmental): Totaling 4578 titles in 10864 volumes, They were colleted during a period of 15 years, before appearance of the Ministerial Decision of 1985 which made the Central Library as deposition center for all Governmental publications.

o Current and feed-back periodical and papers collections: contain all of the Kuwaiti publications of periodicals and journals, in addition to some more selected Arab and foreign periodicals.
o The United Nations publications: Since 1997 publications of the UN and UNESCO are received regularly and hosted officially at the KNL.

o Audio Library: Audio recordings of the lectures, seminars, meetings and congresses which were held in Kuwait constitute is an important part of the KNL. In addition, the music library also holds the artistic legacy of music in the country.

Kuwait National Library Mission


• To Compile, organize, document and protect the national heritage and various kinds of intellectual output.

• Organization and protection of the intellectual materials about Kuwait, and the Arab and foreign countries as well as all the other compilations, documents and similar materials about the cultural heritage of Arab Gulf, Arab peninsula and the Arabic and Islamic civilization.

• To establish and develop international selected collections of various subjects which are related to Kuwait, Arab and the Islamic world.

• To patron, coordinate and support cooperation activities between libraries and information centers in Kuwait.

• To work as a depository library for all kinds of the national compiled documents.

• To work as a national bibliographyl center.

• To support and fasilitate activities of higher education and scientific research.

For more information, you can check the official website http://www.nlk.gov.kw/e-main.htm  and
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=ai~content=a713531795