On Thursday 9 April the Icelandic Human Rights Centre gave its library to the National and University Library of Iceland / Þjóðarbókhlaða. Since the Centre was founded its library has been growing, and many people have turned to it for sources and information. The library now has well over a thousand titles, half of them journals, yearbooks and reports of various kinds. The books were formally handed over in the National and University Library / Þjóðarbókhlaða, in the presence of staff and board members of the Icelandic Human Rights Centre and some of the Library’s staff.
Most of the books are in English, but there are also a good number in the Nordic languages and a few in French, German and Spanish. In recent years fewer people have visited the library, and with the gift the Centre wants to improve the public’s access to scholarly material on human rights.
Bjarni Jónsson, chair of the Human Rights Centre’s executive board, said that the idea of giving away the library had come up some terms ago, and that the National and University Library had always been the first choice. By entrusting the collection to the Library, the Centre wants to improve access to what is, after all, the beginnings of a specialised library, so that it will serve the academic community, and also people interested in human rights, more effectively.
At the handover, National Librarian Ingibjörg Steinunn Sverrisdóttir said that the gift contains a great deal of valuable material, for example a good collection of new and valuable law books. Much of the material was not in the Library before, so the gift is a real asset for the Library and a valuable addition to its collections in this field