The Hue city Monuments Conservation Centre plans to build by 2010 a court-style library containing works relating to Vietnamese feudalism and the Nguyen Dynasty in particular.

The library will be built on the site of the Tang Thu Lau building, the former archive of the Nguyen dynasty (1802-1945)

The remains of the archive are located on an island in the middle of Hoc Hai Lake on Dinh Tien Hoang Street within the former Forbidden City.

Once completed, the library will house a collection of documents chronicling feudal matters in several languages, including Han (Chinese), Nom (Vietnamese ideographic script developed from Chinese characters), French and modern Vietnamese.

The centre’s experts have surveyed documents preserved at villages in and around Hue City, especially those issued by kings, such as orders, decrees, edicts and conferment documents.

The documents will be translated, transformed into modern languages and digitized to cater to professional researchers.

The building of the library will require the clearing of nearly 20 households residing in the area.

VietNamNet//VNS