The library was built in many stages starting from 1933, from a modest beginning as a private collection. Soon with the help of primarily local citizens, it became a full fledged library. The library also became a repository of archival material written in palm leaf manuscripts, original copies of regionally important historic documents in the contested Contest[›]political history of Sri Lanka and newspapers that were published hundreds of years ago in the Jaffna peninsula. It thus became a place of historic and symbolic importance to the local minority Sri Lankan Tamil people.

The burning of the Jaffna library was an important event in the Sri Lankan civil war. An organized mob went on a rampage on the nights of May 31 to June 2, 1981, burning the Jaffna public library. It was one of the most violent examples of ethnic biblioclasm of the twentieth century. At the time of its destruction, the library was one of the biggest in Asia, containing over 97,000 different books and manuscripts.