Biblioteca Departamental Jorge Garcés Borrero, Public library in Cali, Colombia

The Biblioteca Departamental Jorge Garcés Borrero is a public library in central Cali that serves the entire Valle del Cauca department. It holds reading rooms, thematic collections, and computer stations where visitors can access digital resources alongside printed materials.

The library was founded to give the growing population of Valle del Cauca access to books and knowledge during a period when public reading spaces were few in the region. Over time it expanded its collections and adopted digital tools to keep pace with changing needs.

The library is named after Jorge Garcés Borrero, whose personal collection formed its core; his sons selected and donated more than 7,500 volumes from 1948. The Sala Valle del Cauca, created in 1998, gathers 8,200 items and 816 magazine titles covering the history, symbols and figures of the department's 42 municipalities.

The library stands at Calle 5.ª with Avenida Roosevelt, in the Manzana del Saber complex alongside the natural science and interactive museums. The Hemeroteca, the newspaper and periodical collection, is on the first floor, as is the Hellen Keller room for users with hearing or visual disabilities; literature, geography and history occupy the fourth floor.

The first inventory, drawn up under the decimal system, listed 15,000 volumes, 5,200 pamphlets and 5,600 newspaper collections valued at 200,000 pesos of the time, many of them works of restricted circulation or titles no longer sold because of their small print runs. The library opened on 13 June 1954 as the city's second public library, after the Biblioteca del Centenario.