The National Library of China

The National Library of China in Brief  The library is located in West Beijing.  It’s predecessor was the Capital Library established in  Opened to the public 8/27/1912.  In 1916 library started accepting legal deposit copies of the national publications.  1928 the library got the name the National Beijing Library.

NLC in brief:  The name was not officially changed to Zhong Guo Guo Jia Tu Shu Guan or The National Library of China, until  The NLC is a comprehensive research library.  A national repository of the home publications.  A national bibliographic center.  A national center of library information networks.  And a library research and development center.

NLC in brief...  This library serves the central legislature, government, and key research institutions, academy, education, business and the general public.  The library is responsible for the official cultural agreements and conducts communication and cooperation with the libraries both at home and abroad.  By the numbers:  Total floor area – 250,000 square meters.  This number varies depending on where you look – by on their website it said they ranked 3rd in size to other world libraries.  By the end of 2008 – 26,310,000 volumes/artifacts. I am oh so sure they have added to it!!  270,000 rare books.

NLC in brief...  1,640,000 volumes of general ancient books.  35,000 pieces of the scripted turtle shells and animal bones.  This library would obviously have the largest collection of Chinese books, but they also have the biggest collection of materials in foreign language in the country.  The library is open 365 days a year.  They have 24/7 online access with various multimedia networks and the Internet. Exhibition of Bones. Reading Room

The National Library of China Old Building and now main branch

100 Years of NLC Celebrated in 2009  The founding of the national library was sanctified by Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty ( ), in September The library was temporarily located at the site of the Guanghua Temple in Shichahai. Moved to the Imperial College near Beihai Park and finally to its current site near Zizhuyuan Park near Xizhimen.

100 Years…in a time of war.  Before the July 7 incident of 1937, in order to protect the nation’s rare books, the curator transported them to the south of China.  Japanese Invasion of China began in earnest.  The same curator employed the same strategy yet again when Shanghai fell and was occupied by the enemy.  He risked his own life to collect the most important rare books and sent them to the U.S. for microfilming.  A total of 102 boxes were shipped, containing 30,000 books from 2,700 genres. Yuan Tongli was the curator.

Dunhuang and Turpan Materials Center This center was planned in 1983 and established in 1988.

Dunhuang and Turpan Materials Center  This center is responsible for the acquisition, arrangement and collection of materials related to Dunhuang and Turpan studies for scholars around the world.  The Reading Room of Dunhuang and Turpan Materials contains a history of the Sui and Tang dynasties, and history, geography and religious culture of the Western Regions.  Materials include: Microforms, photos, monographs, journals, conference proceedings and A/V materials in Chinese, Western languages, Japanese and other languages.  Dunhuang and Turpan were part of The Silk Road.

Rare pieces include:  Dunhuang Manuscripts were discovered in the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang and includes editions of Chinese classics and Buddhism sutras.  Zhaoheng Tripitaka of the Jin Dynasty was printed in the Jin dynasty ( ). The Buddhist cannon is comprised of 6,980 volumes of text, using 168,000 woodblocks.  Oracle Bones > inscriptions on animal bones and tortoise shells from the Shang Dynasty (16 th – 11 th Century BC).  Yongle Encyclopedia is a Chinese compilation commissioned by the Ming Dynasty ( ) by Emperor Yongle in 1403 and completed in It was then the world’s largest known general encyclopedia and one of the earliest.  And The Complete Library of the Four Branches of Literature which is bound into 36,381 volumes with more than 79,000 chapters, comprising about 2.3 million pages.

A digitized rare Chinese book:

Rarities: Buddhist sutra commissioned by Yongle Emperor. An original manuscript.

Rare Books Collection

Primary functions of the NLC:  To pass on the culture of the Chinese nation.  To contribute to teaching and scientific research.  To serve the ordinary reader:  Reading rates are down within the population served by the NLC and other libraries, but the NLC are finding new ways to engage. There is nothing ordinary about the NLC from my point of view.

NLC Featured Services:  Mobile Digital Library Services: which provides NLC news on events; Culture Express; recommended books, and info on retrieval, and updates regularly.  China Digital Library for Visual Impairment (CDLVI).  Digital Television Service: this service allows 3 million households to receive a digital feed for NLC lectures, exhibits, and reading through your TV. How Cool.  Touch-screen for Electronic Newspapers: can easily read the news, but can also access to the treasured collections too.  Information Commons (IC): is a one-stop information environment created to meet the users’ comprehensive needs of space, resources and services. It is user-centered, resource-based, technology-relied, service-oriented, innovation-oriented and integrates resource sharing and physical space.

NLC Featured Services:  IC consists of an e-learning area, e-research area, special service area, the National Cultural Information Resources Project experiencing area, e-commerce area, the network communication area and a media center. Whew!  NLC Mobile Newspaper Service: This service pushes newspaper content to cell phones – text, images, and other information. The service is by subscription and downloads more than 40 kinds of newspapers.  Provide Wireless Local Area Network.  Virtual Reality Services: including virtual navigation and virtual reading terminals.

NLC Featured Services:  Portable Electronic Readers: Users can download e-books, and NLC will also provide the readers, or you can bring your own. NLC e-book resources platform has about 190 thousand kinds of electronic books in 380 thousand volumes and more than one thousand yearbooks. The e-books from more than 400 publishers cover the entire second grade classifications of the Chinese Library Classification.  Intelligent Stack Navigation: This service enables users to seek the exact target book precisely by virtually presenting users a vivid, three-dimensional navigational map.

Intelligent Stack Navigation

NLC Featured Services:  This is by far one of the best features I have ever seen! I could certainly use one!  

NLC Main Reading Room Exterior of Main Library

NLC Cross Sections – Jurgen Engel Architect

NLC – Site Plan

The Kerry Center of the NLC.

Interior of the NLC – Main Lobby.

Interior - NLC

Reading Room

Reader’s Entrance