DUSHANBE, November 25, 2009, Asia-Plus — Employees of the National Firdavsi Library in Dushanbe are currently taking training course at the National Library of Iran in Tehran, Asia-Plus has learned from the National Firdavsi Library director Sharif Toshev.
“From November 21 to December 1, six employees of our library are taking training courses on preservation and restoration of books and so forth,” Toshev said, noting that the training courses were organized with support from the Iranian Embassy in Dushanbe.
The National Library of Iran is located in Tehran, with several branches are scattered throughout the city.
Prior to the library”s official inauguration in 1937, other libraries existed that performed the same function informally. The first prototype of a national library in Iran was the Library of Dar al-Funun College, established in 1851. In 1899, another library called the “Nation”s Library” was inaugurated in Tehran.
The present National Library of Iran incorporates many different collections from older libraries, including many rare and valuable manuscripts.
The new building is specially designed to combine different faculties of the library in a single platform. The library by itself is over 90,000 square meters, one of the largest library campuses in the Middle East. It encompasses 5 separate halls, each hall dedicated to a different faculty, including Humanities, Social Sciences, Law, Science and Science Education, and Health Studies.
