Library of Parliament

Library of Parliament

Library of Parliament, Ottawa
Type	Information repository and research resource for the Parliament of Canada
Established	1876
Collection
Size	600,000 items
Criteria for collection	Parliamentary business, research publications
Other information
Director	Sonia L'Heureux,Parliamentary Librarian of Canada
Staff	300
Website	Official website

The Library of Parliament (French: Bibliothèque du Parlement) is the main information repository and research resource for the Parliament of Canada. The main branch of the library sits at the rear of the Centre Block on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, and is the last untouched part of that larger building's original incarnation after it burned down in 1916. The library has been augmented and renovated a number of times since its construction in 1876, the last between 2002 and 2006, though the form and decor remain essentially authentic. The building today serves as a Canadian icon, and appears on the obverse of the Canadian ten-dollar bill.

The library is overseen by the Parliamentary Librarian of Canada and an associate or assistant librarian. The Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate and the Parliamentary Budget Officer are also considered to be officers of the library.

Designed by Thomas Fuller and Chilion Jones, and inspired by the British Museum Reading Room, the building is formed as a chapter house, separated from the main body of the Centre Block by a corridor; this arrangement, as well as many other details of the design, was reached with the input of the then parliamentary librarian, Alpheus Todd. The walls, supported by a ring of 16 flying buttresses, are load bearing, double-wythe masonry, consisting of a hydraulic lime rubble fill core between an interior layer of dressed stone and rustic Nepean sandstone on the exterior. Around the windows and along other edges is dressed stone trim, along with a multitude of stone carvings, including floral patterns and friezes, keeping with the Victorian High Gothic style of the rest of the parliamentary complex. The roof, set in three tiers topped by a cupola, used to be a timber frame structure covered with slate tiles, but has been rebuilt with steel framing and deck covered with copper. The initial overall combination of colours—grey Gloucester limestone and grey Nepean, red Potsdam and buff Ohio sandstones, as well as purple and green slate banding—conformed to the picturesque style known as structural polychromy.