About the Library

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The Library was founded in 1836 with a collection of 7,300 volumes. A century later, the Library housed 23,000 volumes, including some important collections of Portuguese parliamentary documents, of documents concerning the former portuguese colonies, etc..

After 1974, the services of the Library were restructured in order to cover all the matters of parliamentary interest (law, politics, economics, science and technology, social life, public administration, statistics, etc.).

Ancient books (1491-1801): around 5,000 volumes. The collection comprises typographic treasures coming from the ancient Library of the Cortes. It is a set of 1581 titles, which includes two incunabula.

Monographs: The collection of monographs contains about 52,000 volumes and it is organised chronologically by date of publication. The most recent publications (from the last 4 years) are organised according to the classification scheme of thesaurus Eurovoc, providing free access for users.

Periodical publications: The Library houses 3580 titles of periodicals, which include over 100,000 volumes. About one third of the titles of periodicals are out of print publications. The most recent Periodical Publications are organised according to their origin in collections of Portuguese and foreign periodicals, periodicals of national statistics and periodicals from international organisations and European institutions.

National legislation and collections of laws: The Library contains all national legislation from the Law collections of king Afonso V and king Manuel I to nowadays forming a collection of about 3,000 binded volumes.

Official Journal of the Assembly of the Republic and other official publications: This collection includes all the series of the Official Journal of the Assembly of the Republic since 1975 (the previous official journals are in the Parliamentary Historical Archives) and all the publications of the Assembly of the Republic.

Official Journal of the European Communities: This paper-based collection contains the Official Journal of the European Communities since 1985.

Daily and weekly newspapers: the Library offers its users all daily and weekly national newspapers, as well as some international newspapers.

© 2008 Biblioteca da Assembleia da República Palácio de São Bento, 1249-068 Lisboa | Telefone: +351 213919538 | Fax: +351 213914145 | e-mail: bib@ar.parlamento.pt