Centro Universitario Santa Ana

The Library

General background/history

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After several years of intense bibliographic compilation work, in September 1974 Santa Ana Library registered its first book. Renamed since 1996 to be the IX Marqués de la Encomienda Library as a tribute to its founder and patron Don Mariano Fernández-Daza, it currently boasts a bibliographic collection of 161.600 entries of which 81.795 are already in the computerized General Catalog which has been fully updated with the publications incorporated into the library since 1996. Approximately half of the collection corresponds to works about Extremadura, which makes it the most important library, after the National Library in Madrid, for books on the region.

Yet the true importance of the library, more than the mere quantity of its collection, lies in the quality of its works, carefully selected over all these years by Don Mariano Fernández-Daza, IX Marqués de la Encomienda. Don Mariano has offered his knowledge, his time and his heritage to this enormous project, whose doors he opened to everyone from its inception, turning this institution, despite not having any type of funding, into a true "public library" with established standards, services and schedules, including extended hours, for loans, consultations, library advice, etc. The library has more than 6.100 users with a library card, and acts a reference center for all types of research on Extremadura, as well as a meeting point for lovers of culture in general.

After important construction was carried out in 1996, the library occupies a total area of 433 square meters distributed as follows: P1010080A
• Reading room with 45 places for users, 14 linear meters of reference works for free access consultations and 2 computers for consulting the OPAC (Public Online Access Catalog).
• Library with 7 rooms and a total of 2,590 linear meters of shelves.
• Microfilm archive room with 4 consultation stations equipped with microfilm readers.

Our library also has a large collection (exceeding 17,500 entries) of brochures and reprints from Extremadura, most of which come from the closing down of periodicals such as the Revista de Estudios Extremadura, Alcántara or the Revista de Extremadura, among others, which greatly facilitates the investigative work for researchers who visits us.

Also included in the printed collection are the newspaper archives which have 2,530 papers, including 987 from Extremadura, with a chronology that begins in the mid-nineteenth century. It is a general library in terms of its subject coverage, although it has an eminently Extremaduran heart in terms of its contents, where its oldest collection is a treasure, containing works printed from the 16th century.

Special mention must be made of the sections dedicated to subjects such as Bibliography, Library Science, Biographies, and History and Literature, as well as those of Social Work, Education and Agricultural Engineering because they are the three university degrees taught at Santa Ana University Center of which it is a part.