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Likewise, António Ferrão, serving in the Inspection of Libraries and Archives since the beginning of the First Republic, provided detailed and well-founded diagnoses of the situation in the libraries, particularly the BNL. According to the reports from those in charge, the BNL's collection had grown excessively without the necessary conditions for the proper treatment of the various documents or even the most basic maintenance of such a valuable collection. There was also a lack of a plan to make the existing works in the National Library accessible to the public, resulting in usage policies that fluctuated between concealment and popularisation, to the point of turning the library into an "androgynous organism," according to the aforementioned inspector.
The dichotomous policy, based on a strong sense of preserving the scholarly nature of the National Library, led to the creation of the Lisbon Popular Library (BPL) which, nonetheless, maintained an umbilical connection to the BNL, a fact that bothered those advocating for a clearer distinction of the functions of both libraries.
The direction of the National Library was always at the mercy of political whims, shaped by the successive changes in government during its establishment phase, when it had the significant task of incorporating bibliographic collections from the defunct convent libraries. Later, during the First Republic, the BNL became a battleground for political and ideological conflicts arising from differing views on its role in promoting public reading. This issue left a lasting impact that extended into the early 1980s, overshadowing the actions of the directors in the post-25 April 1974 period and delaying the necessary technical modernisation of the National Library's services.
