National Library of Cambodia

The National Library of Cambodia is the national library in Phnom Penh, opened in the 1920s by the French colonial government. In 2018 it held rare palm-leaf manuscripts and national documents, along with books in many languages.

The library building in Phnom Penh, 2014.

Organization details
Focus areas	national library; palm-leaf manuscripts; national documents
City	Phnom Penh
Country	Cambodia
Address	Phnom Penh, Cambodia

In the Explorer

National Library of Cambodia connects to 5 pages

Phnom Penh, Khmer Rouge, Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, French protectorate of Cambodia and Buddhist Institute.

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Explore the 5 connected pages

On this page

1. Founding
2. Royal Library
3. Khmer Rouge years
4. Rebuilding
5. In 2018
6. References

On this page

1. Founding
2. Royal Library
3. Khmer Rouge years
4. Rebuilding
5. In 2018
6. References

Founding

In 1911 the Résident supérieur of Cambodia decreed a central archives for the country. A report of 1917 urged that the decree be put into effect, with a new building for the archives and a library. Paul Boudet was made Director of Archives and Libraries for Indochina. Building began in 1923, and the library opened to the public on December 24, 1924. The Asia-Europe Foundation also dates its founding to 1924, a time when French titles made up most of the books. The French designed the building in the 1920s for maximum air flow, following library design of the time.

Royal Library

The French scholar Suzanne Karpelès is credited with founding a Royal Khmer Library in 1925, and she directed it and the Buddhist Institute (វិទ្យាស្ថានពុទ្ធសាសនបណ្ឌិត្យ) until 1941. By the Angkor Database's account, that Royal Library, of which she was the first curator, later became the National Library. A press article of 1927 or 1928 has her as curator of the Royal Library of Cambodia. Her provincial tours drew sizable donations of manuscripts formerly kept in pagodas. Between March 1927, when she came back from leave, and December 1, a span of about eight and a half months, its reading room had 6,598 readers: 3,640 monks and 2,958 lay people. She also held talks and film showings there.

By that article, the Royal Library published a monthly review, Kampuchea Sorya (កម្ពុជសុរិយា), then in its second year, and had issued 750 copies of a French work by Finot and eleven engravings of Buddhist subjects. During her leave a bronze Mahayana statuette that a monk had given to the library was taken to the museum; Le Fol, then Résident supérieur, ordered it sent back to the place its donor had chosen. A 1993 article, quoting the historian David Chandler, has Kambuja Surya as the only Khmer-language periodical before 1936, published monthly under the French-funded Buddhist Institute.

Khmer Rouge years

Accounts of the library under the Khmer Rouge (ខ្មែរក្រហម) differ in detail. By one, the library and archives buildings housed pig keepers and the shelving stored supplies; much of the collection was lost mainly through neglect, and people lit fires and rolled cigarettes with records and books. By another, some books were burned while others were pulled off the shelves to decay on the floors, dishes took the place of books on the shelves, and pigs were raised on the grounds. In the account of Princess Sisowath Ritarac, a consultant at the library in 2002, it served as a kitchen, and rare books and manuscripts lay rotting on the floor. Among the survivors were unique papers on Cambodia from the late 1800s.

Rebuilding

Foreign governments helped it reopen after the end of Khmer Rouge rule. Its books were gathered from many places and brought together from 1979, and staff picked books up off the streets and out of abandoned houses. In the State of Cambodia years it was both the national library and the sole public library of a city of over 700,000. It held perhaps 50,000 volumes, and the main collection, leaving aside the palm-leaf manuscripts, had just 315 separate Khmer titles. It had no budget and no trained staff, and accepted whatever it was given. In Judy Ledgerwood's account, written in the State of Cambodia years, the Australian librarian Gail Morrison helped the library and introduced open stacks.

In March 1986 the National Archives was separated from the library, which came under the Ministry of Information and Culture. With money from the Henry Luce Foundation, Cornell University started a program in 1989 to save surviving library and archival material, and the library's palm-leaf and mulberry-leaf manuscripts were cleaned, boxed, microfilmed and cataloged on computer.

On a visit in the fall of 1996, its circulating books sat behind a service desk for staff to fetch, and each visitor had to register on every visit. The card catalog listed books by author, by title and by subject, with subjects in French, English and Khmer. Material in Khmer was scarce. By 2002 a grant from France and the Francophonie had paid for an inventory of its French-language books, entered on computer. With most of the country's Royal Chronicles manuscripts lost in the 1970s and 1980s, its holdings became a key source on Cambodia before the war. In 2002 the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts (ក្រសួងវប្បធម៌ និងវិចិត្រសិល្បៈ), the Rotary Club of Cambodia and the National Library of Cambodia Foundation, which Sisowath Ritarac created, planned a gala to raise money for a 1,000-page catalog for students.

In 2018

In 2018 the library was run by the Director of Cultural Publications and Reading of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts. It is housed in a colonial building, where the annual Cambodia Book Fair is held.

References 8