While the French colonial government established national libraries in both Việt Nam and Cambodia, they only created a small city library in Laos, for which a large wooden building was constructed at Ban Anou in central Vientiane. In 1956 this library became the Vientiane General Library under the Ministry of Education, Sport and Religious Affairs of the Royal Lao Government, functioning thereafter mainly as a resource for local schools. In 1960 it was relocated to Thanon Lane Xang (between the Lycée de Vientiane and Dok Mai Daeng Hotel, today the site of Vientiane's new city library) and again in 1964 to the Ministry of Justice compound on Patuxai Circle, where it was designated in the following year as the National Library within the Directorate of National Library, National Museum and Archaeology of the Ministry of Education, Fine Arts, Sports and Youth. Since 1975 the National Library has been moved again on several occasions – to what is now the Lao National Library building in Thanon Samsenthai from 1983 to 1986, and to a small building on Nam Phu Square from 1986-1987. In 1987 it relocated to its current premises, a French colonial residence with a one-storey annex at the rear. Today the National Library operates in accordance with the Rules and Responsibilities of the National Library (1989) approved by the Ministry of Information and Culture, which list its responsibilities as: studying and promoting the policies, laws and regulations of the Lao PDR, including planning and directions on library development of the Ministry of Information and Culture; studying and developing the implementation plan for developing technical skills of all staff in order to improve the library to a standardised level and as a national centre for preservation of national cultural heritage and provision of information; developing and building the capacity of library personnel; studying and establishing the plan and project for reading promotion development throughout Laos; studying and planning for co-operation projects with foreign agencies, especially on the establishment and development of the library in accordance with the law on regulation; and registering all palm leaf manuscripts and printing materials about Laos and keeping the list of those registered palm leaf manuscripts for microfilming. Given its smallness in size, the responsibilities of the National Library are very wide-ranging indeed – it functions as a public lending library, a special library, a university library and a school library, as well as being the home of the Lao national collection. Its most important tasks include preparing a National Bibliography and offering guidance and advice to schools on the establishment of libraries, training their librarians how to classify and manage their collections. It currently has a staffing compliment of 32 people, all government officers; their duties are organised by section and cover Administration, Acquisitions, Reading Rooms, Cataloguing, Reading Promotion for Young People, Rare Books and Book Binding/Repair/Preservation and Conservation. In addition to this there are another eight staff working on the Lao-German Preservation of Lao Manuscripts Programme, whose salaries are paid for by project funds. Three staff members have Masters degrees in Librarianship (one from Thailand, one from Việt Nam, one from France), nine have Bachelors degrees in Librarianship (eight from Russia, one from Thailand), and a number of others have Certificates in Librarianship obtained from various countries including Thailand and Russia. The National Library operates several separate reading rooms: the Reference Room; the Lao and Thai Reading Room; the English and French Reading Room; the Newspaper and Serials Reading Room; the Children's Reading Room; the Rare Book (Documentation) Room; and the Palm Leaf Manuscript Microfilming Project Room. The size of the collection is currently around 7,000 volumes, comprising 1,200 volumes in Lao, 1,500 in Thai, 1,500 in French and 3,000 in English. Included are monographs, serials (titles), maps and posters. As yet there is no dedicated Lao heritage collection; the Rare Books Collection dates mainly from the French colonial period and includes materials such as many volumes of Le tour du monde from 1860-70. Non-printed materials consists of 350 microfilms, 100 microfiche, 50 cassettes, five filmstrips, 10 films, 200 multimedia kits, 15 videos, 10 compact discs, five CD-ROMs and 550 stereo and music discs. The Palm Leaf Manuscript Collection derives from a donation by a private collector and currently comprises around 6,000 bundles of palm leaf manuscripts dating back to 1465; in addition, the Preservation of Lao Manuscripts Programme has transferred an additional 54,000 palm leaf manuscript fascicles from 830 wats around the country onto 1,006 rolls of microfilm. Major publications of the National Library include the occasional magazine Lao Literature and a magazine on palm leaf manuscripts and research.