Belgrade City Library

Belgrade City Library (BCL) is the largest lending library in Serbia. It was created in 1929. It is a parent library for a network of 13 municipal libraries and their branches. Its holdings consist of almost 1.800.000 items, kept in about 70 facilities (1 central building with 4 dislocated facilities, 13 municipal libraries with 50 branch libraries, and 2 separate children's departments) with a total area of 13.000 square meters. BCL has more than 150,000 users. The Library has about 230 employees. BCL is a patron library to more than 450 libraries (school, public and special) in Belgrade territory. The Central library is placed in one of the finest buildings in Belgrade, at the beginning of the pedestrian zone of Knez Mihailova street. It was built in 1867, at the very entry to Kalemegdan park, as “Serbian Crown” hotel. Since October 1986, the Belgrade City Library has been located at this place. The two main mottos of the BCL are "The Library – Cultural Heart of Belgrade" and "The Library – A Place for All". This shows us that BLC’s desire is to lively participate in cultural and social life of the city, as well as that it is open to all types of services and activities, to every need of its citizens. BCL is one of the main cultural and educational center of the city. Each year BCL organizes over 3000 cultural events and various educational and entertaining programs, workshops, seminars, conferences, trainings, exhibitions; Also, BCL provides an open access to its physical and electronic collections and information, and to its services; offers new concepts like "Technoteka", a collaborative work space inside the Library for making, learning, exploring and sharing that uses high tech (3D printers, Lego Education robots...). In our two departments – Department for Old and Rare Books and Books on Belgrade and Periodical Department – we have a great collection of rare books, magazines, photos and other material.