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The first director of the organization was Serke Berhan Gebreegzy.

"Haile Selassie emphasized that he laid the foundation of the National Library for the liberation of the minds of his people" in the speech to announce the establishment of the national library.

Additionally, much of the original collection came from the East African Italian Government Library.

In 1951, the Ministry of the Pen wrote a letter to the five printing houses in Ethiopia requesting them to deposit to the library three copies of every title printed. This however, could not be enforced, and resulted in few publications. In 1976, the Legal Deposit Proclamation no. 50 of 1976 required all printed matter to be deposited in three copies in the National Library. This was an incredibly important development for the libraries of the country and allowed the library to drastically increase the collection of published materials.

The National Library's acquisition of materials benefitted from a United States sponsored program, which began in 1971, for the microfilming, cataloging, repair, and return of manuscripts in churches and monasteries in Ethiopia.

In 1975, the National Library was changed into the Department of National Library and Archives of the Ministry of Culture and Sports. It now includes four divisions: the national library, the public library, technical services, and archives.

In 1981, it reorganized again to incorporate the former Ethiopian Microfilm and Microfiche Library.


 * Pankhurst, R. (1988). Libraries in Post-Revolutionary Ethiopia. Information Development, 4(4), 239–245. https://doi.org/10.1177/026666698800400405


 * Assefa, S. (2009). Ethiopia: Libraries, archives and museums. In M.J. Bates (Ed.). Encyclopedia of library and information sciences (Third Edition). Boca Raton: CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9780203757635


 * Katarzyna Hryćko. (2012). An Outline of the National Archives and Library of Ethiopia. Aethiopica (Wiesbaden, Germany), 10(1). https://doi.org/10.15460/aethiopica.10.1.195