(L-R): Thierry Hirtz; Guy Arendt, Secretary of State for Culture; François Bausch, Minister of Sustainable Development and Infrastructure; Xavier Bettel, Prime Minister, Minister of Culture; Monique Kieffer;
Credit: MCULT
The National Library of Luxembourg (the BnL) will have a new home later this year, with the construction site in Kirchberg receiving a ministerial visit on Thursday.
Luxembourg's Prime Minister and Minister of Culture, Xavier Bettel, was accompanied by the Minister of Sustainable Development and Infrastructures, François Bausch, as well as by the secretary of State to Culture, Guy Arendt. They were briefed on the progress of the project: the schedule of works is on time and is scheduled to conclude in July, with the building to open its doors towards the end of the year.
During the site visit, Prime Minister Bettel stressed the importance of the new building: "This library is an investment in the future and will enable the BnL to face the challenges of the knowledge society of the 21st century." The National Library of Luxembourg is the country's largest library holding more than 1.8 million physical documents complemented by an increasing number of digital publications. To make reading more attractive and to stimulate intellectual curiosity, the new reading rooms will provide direct access for up to 300,000 books.
The new library will provide a modern, sustainable and functional infrastructure that is highly connected and user-friendly. Currently scattered over six different sites, all the National Library's depots and services will be grouped together in a single site to optimise daily operations. The building's architecture has been designed so that the function of the building is visible from the outside and gives the public the desire to cross the threshold of the library, to wander around and discover its various collections.
Among the BnL's missions is also the provision of a high-performance IT infrastructure used in a decentralised way by the 83 Luxembourg libraries members of the bibnet.lu network, providing all these libraries with high quality tools. The a-z.lu search engine, implemented by the BnL, allows users to locate and visualise in just a few clicks all the printed and digital collections of these libraries.
The 35,000m2 floor surface area building has a total budget of €112,171,000.
