Claim: National Library of India is the library of public record.

The National Library on the Belvedere Estate in Alipore , Kolkata , is the largest library in India by volume and India 's library of public record . It is under the Department of Culture , Ministry of Tourism & Culture , Government of India . The library is designated to collect , disseminate and preserve printed material produced in India . The library is situated on the scenic 30 acre Belvedere Estate . It is the largest in India with a collection in excess of 2.2 million books . Before independence , it was the official residence of Lt. Governor of Bengal .   The National Library of India is the county 's largest library and the library of public record . The library `` operates under the national government 's Department of Culture and is designated to collect , disseminate , and preserve all printed material produced in India , and all foreign works published about the country -- where ` every work about India ... can be seen and read ''' -LRB- Murray , 2009 -RRB- . The National Library is a result of the merging of the public library with the Imperial Library -- several government libraries . The National Library -LRB- 1953 -RRB- , then the Imperial Library housed several foreign -LRB- British -RRB- and Indian titles and was open to the public . Of further note , the National Library of India collects book , periodicals , and titles in `` virtually all the Indian languages , with Hindi , Kashmiri , Punjab , Sindhi , Telugu , and Urdu '' maintaining the largest stacks -LRB- Murray , 2009 -RRB- . The Special Collections in the National Library of India house at least fifteen languages including `` Assamese , Bengali , Gujarati ... and Tamil with many rare works -LRB- Murray , 2009 -RRB- . The Hindi department has books that date back all the way to the nineteenth century and the first ever books printed in that language . The collections break down and consist of 86,000 maps and 3,200 manuscripts .