State Public Library in Guadalajara

This public library is the main library of Guadalajara, one of the most important cities of the Autonomous Community of Castilla-La Mancha (a region on the center-east of Spain) that counts on a population of 75.493 in habitants.

The library is located in a historical building called Palacio de los Dávalos. Former palace that belonged to a Spanish nobiliary family in the 16th century. For this reason, the current library preserve a magnificent historical coffered ceiling and a central courtyard surrounded by stone columns of the same period.

Since 2004 has been carried out an important restoration works in order to preserve the historical and architectonical elements in the inside, like paintings in fresco or stone shields that decorates the original palace.

Also, a new modern building has been built annexe to the original palace adapted to news users needs.

The four-stores building has 5.825 m 2 and has been a restoration project by Spanish architects Francisco Fernández Longoria and Dionisio Hernández Gil, whose has created a good combination between the preservation of the historical palace and the needs of a functional and comfortable modern building which is organized as follows:

Ground floor: Main entrance as a multi-purpose hall with periodical section and lending service.
1st floor: Children and youth area as well as a multimedia room.
2nd floor: Adults reading room and local collection section.
3rd: Staff area.

The basement contains the bibliographic store.

Inside there are 223 consultation places and the collection it is distributed in different sections:

Reference section: 7.892 reference and information resources.
Periodical section: 1.602 titles of magazines (whom 1.106 are closed actually).
Adults loan section: 66.500 issues.
Children and youth section: more of 25.000 issues.

The local collection includes 53 manuscripts, 21 incunabula, 400 printed books from the 16th, 250 from the 17th and 500 from the 18th century.