The National Library operates in accordance with the Rules and Responsibilities of the National Library (1989), approved by the Ministry of Information and Culture.

These list its responsibilities as: (i) studying and promoting the policies, laws and regulations of the People's Democratic Republic of Laos, including planning and directions on library development of the Ministry of Information and Culture; (ii) studying and developing the implementation plan for developing the technical skills of all library staff with a view to improving the library to a standardised level and developing it as a national centre for preservation of national cultural heritage and provision of information; (iii) developing and building the capacity of library personnel; (iv) studying, establishing and implementing the National Reading Promotion for Children and Young People Project throughout the country; (v) studying and planning co-operation projects with foreign agencies, especially those relating to the establishment and development of the national library network; and (vi) registering and microfilming palm leaf manuscripts and maintaining a bibliographical database of these manuscripts under the Preservation of Lao Manuscripts Programme (PLMP).

The National Library is currently housed in a large two-storey French colonial house built in 1923, with a one-storey annex at the rear. Given its smallness in size, its responsibilities are very wide-ranging indeed – it functions as a public lending library, a special library, a university library and a school library, as well as being the home of the Lao national collection.

At the time of writing the National Library has a staffing compliment of 32 people, all of whom are government officers; their duties are organised by section and cover Administration, Acquisitions, Reading Rooms, Cataloguing, Rare Books, Book Binding/Repair/Preservation/Conservation and the National Reading Promotion for Children and Young People Project. In addition to this there are a further eight staff working on the Preservation of Lao Manuscripts Programme (PLMP). Three staff members have Masters degrees in Librarianship (one from Thailand, one from Việt Nam and one from France), nine have Bachelors degrees in Librarianship (eight from Russia, one from Thailand), and a number of others have Certificates in Librarianship obtained from various countries, including Thailand and Russia.

The National Library houses seven separate reading rooms: the Reference Room; the Lao and Thai Reading Room; the English and French Reading Room; the Newspaper and Serials Reading Room; the Children's Reading Room; the Rare Book (Documentation) Room; and the Palm Leaf Manuscript Project Microfilming Room.

The National Library's collection currently comprises around 7,000 volumes, including 1,200 volumes in Lao, 1,500 in Thai, 1,500 in French and 3,000 in English. Included are monographs, serials (titles), maps and posters. Manuscripts consist of 6,000 bundles of original copies and 150 microforms. Other non-printed material includes a further 350 microfilms, 100 microfiche, 50 cassettes, five filmstrips, 10 films, 200 multimedia kits, 15 videos, 10 compact discs, five CD-ROMs and 550 stereo and music discs. The Rare Books Collection dates mainly from the French colonial period and includes materials such as volumes of Le tour du monde dating from 1860-70. All of the above items are catalogued, but at the time of writing a large collection of books in Russian donated by the former Soviet Cultural Centre remain in store, awaiting classification.

The dedicated Palm Leaf Manuscript Storage Facility and Reading Room in the annex at the rear of the building houses an important Palm Leaf Manuscript Collection which derives from a donation by a private collector and currently comprises around 6,000 bundles of palm leaf manuscripts dating back to 1465. The Palm Leaf Manuscript Storage Facility and Reading Room also houses some 1,006 rolls of microfilm containing some 54,018 rare and unique palm leaf manuscripts which have been selected from the 480,000 palm leaf manuscripts restored and documented in 12 different provinces since 1992 as part of the Preservation of Lao Manuscripts Programme (PLMP).

The Palm Leaf Manuscript Collection is also the primary focus of the National Library's two publications, the occasional magazine Lao Literature Series and the PLMP project newsletter Khao Bailan.

The National Library has credit for acquisitions at the State Publishing and Book Distribution House, but almost no funds for outside purchases of library or any other materials, repairs, or new technology. Hence no electronic equipment (TV, video, film or audio) is currently available for readers’ use.

At the time of writing some Ministry of Information and Culture funds have been earmarked for the construction of a new National Library reading room in the compound to the rear of the building.