Brief history

Nepal Government’s Central Library: The Nepal National Education Commission, appointed by the Nepal Govt. in 1954, recommended in its report as saying “A strong central library should be established as a center for study and research”. As a result, an agreement between the Government of Nepal and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was signed on April 30, 1957 to establish a Central Library in Kathmandu. Consequently,  a library named Central Library was established at Lall Durbar (somewhere near the Yak & Yeti hotel), Kathmandu on June 1, 1959 with the effort of Mr. John L. Hafenrichter, the then USAID education advisor in Nepal. The newly established Central Library was a public library and the library’s technical works used to be done under the guidance and technical expertise of Dr. E.W. Erickson, an American librarian who later became the director of Michigan University Library, USA.

The T.U. Library: In the same year, a month later in July 1959, Tribhuvan University Act was passed and the University itself came into existence. Classes began to be run in old buildings at Tripureshwor. This same year, the T.U. Library was established. This library, from the very beginning suffered from meager number of books collection, inadequate space, lack of technical manpower and other facilities. At that time it is said the library had less than one thousand books that were kept piled on the ground one  atop another and only some were shelved in stacks made out of bricks and planks of wood in a very limited space.

Merger of the two libraries: After three years, in 1962, the Central Library at Lal Durbar was handed over to Tribhuvan University Library in accordance with a decision of the Govt. of Nepal, and thus, after the merger of the 3 years old Central library at Lall Durbar (having a collection of 15,000 volumes of books) with the Tribhuvan University Library (having a collection of 7813 volumes) it came to be known as Tribhuvan University Library (TUCL) and the collection reached 24,813 volumes of books. Since 1977 (2033 B.S.) it began to be called as T.U. Central Library. By now, mid March, 2020 (Chaitra 2076), the library’s collection has reached more than 410,000 volumes of books and other documents.