The Mirza Alakbar Sabir Central City Library ( az, Mirzə Ələkbər Sabir adına Mərkəzi Şəhər Kitabxanası) is a public library in downtown Baku,

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...

, established in 1919.

History

In late 1918, the Cultural-Educational Department of the Association of Consumer Societies of Azerbaijan decided to open a public library. Providing the collection for the new library proved to be a difficult task since there was no large-scale publication in the country at the time. The library's initial collection included a few hundred items mostly acquired from personal book collections and its readership was very limited. In 1921, it was named after

Mirza Alekper Sabir Mirza Ali-Akbar Tahirzada ( az, میرزا علی اکبر صابر: 30 May 1862 – 12 July 1911), commonly known by his pseudonym Sabir (), was a satirist and poet in the Russian Empire, who played a leading role in development of Azerbaijani lit ...

in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of his death. At this time, with the exception of limited resources in Azeri, most published materials were in

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...

and

Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities ...

. The library was founded at 13 Verkhnyaya Priyutskaya Street (present-day Shamil Azizbeyov Street). Later it was moved to its present location in the 1904 baroque mansion which once belonged to oil industrialist Ambartsum Melikov and was designed by architect Vartan Sarkisov. By 1929, the library contained 12,300 items and had 4,000 readers, included an association of women readers establish to promote library services among newly emancipated Azerbaijani women. In 1938, the library became the first establishment in Azerbaijan to train professional librarians. In 1941, it became the first library in the country to have a bibliographic reference department. In 2014, the Sabir Central City Library was named "Best Library of the Year".

References

{{coord missing, Azerbaijan 1919 establishments in Azerbaijan Libraries in Baku Libraries established in 1919