The Nepal National Library was founded in January 1957 by the then-His Majesty's Government. The personal library of Rajguru Hem Raj Pandey, the King's spiritual counselor, which had been bought for the nation in 1956, constituted the core of the collection. The collection was relocated to SikriDhoka, a structure inside the Singha Durbar complex, a Rana Palace built after Versailles that was considered to be Asia's largest at the time. The Central Secretariat Library, which was combined with the Nepal National Library, was also housed in Singha Durbar. The overall collection at the time totaled 34,292 books and periodicals.
In 1961, the Nepal National Library was relocated to its current site, the Rana palace known as HariharBhawan in Pulchowk, Lalitpur, where it now occupies the southern wing on the first floor. The National Library published an amazing sequence of publications in the early 1960s, making ancient handwritten manuscripts available in printed form. Lending services began in 1961 and lasted for several years. However, because the collection had never been fully classified and cataloged, it was decided in the early 1980s to halt lending in order to begin the monumental work of classifying the whole stock.