The National Library of India is the largest of its kind in the country and is maintained by the Department of Culture, Ministry of Tourism and Culture. The library spreads over an area of about 30 acres of land and has a collection of over 2.2 million books. It was formed as the Calcutta Public Library in 1836 and the first proprietor of the library was Prince Dwarkanath Tagore.

There was another library named The Imperial Library that was formed in 1891 by combining the many Secretariat libraries of Calcutta. These books originally belonged to the library of East India College and all these were amalgamated in 1903 by the then Governor General of India, Lord Curzon. The library has collection of books belonging to various Indian languages, newspapers and periodicals, maps and microfilms.