KARACHI, June 15: The Provincial Minister for Culture and Tourism, Shabbir Qaimkhani, on Wednesday laid the foundation stone for a new auditorium at the Liaquat National Library. Speaking on the occasion, the minister pointed out that the present reading room had a capacity for 300 persons.
The library with provincial status has over 500,000 books on various topics including textbooks for medical science, engineering, commercial, arts, technology, literature, etc, and is meant to serve the general public and provides them with reading facilities, he said. It also caters to the requirements of students.
The minister said that socio-educational, literary activities, and seminars and symposia were also held at the library.
Mr Qaimkhani said due to appropriate reading facilities, the ratio of readers was increasing for the last three years, which had created the need for more reading halls. It was why a new auditorium was planned.
The Liaquat Memorial Library was founded in 1950 and initially established in Block No 76 at the Pakistan Secretariat Karachi in Jan 1954.
It was amalgamated with the National Library and shifted from the Pakistan Secretariat Barracks to the Shikarpur Panchayati building at Mereweather Tower, where it functioned for almost a decade.
In 1964, the library was shifted to a rented bungalow in the PECHS.
In view of its importance, the government then decided to construct a permanent building for the library. The development plan for the same was prepared in 1959 and approved in Sept 1960.
On account of shifting of the country’s capital to Islamabad, it was decided that the National Library should be established at Islamabad.
It was then renamed as the Liaquat Memorial Library and transferred to the Sindh Government’s Culture and Tourism Department in Feb 1986, where it is now situated near the PTV centre in Karachi. The building of the library spreads over 58,729 sq-ft.
