By the end of 2002, China had 2,698 public libraries with a collection of well over 400 million copies. Of the university or college libraries, the collections of the PekingUniversity and WuhanUniversity libraries lead the nation. The national network of libraries also includes scientific research institution libraries, trade union libraries, and the libraries and reading rooms attached to government institutions, army units, primary and secondary schools, townships, enterprises and local communities.
The National Library of China, with a collection of about 22 million volumes, is a world-class library and the largest library in Asia. The library not only has the largest collection of Chinese books in the world, but also the biggest collection of materials in foreign languages in the country, accounting for nearly 50 percent of the library's collection. Near the PurpleBambooPark in the western part of Beijing, the library has three stories below ground and 19 stories above ground. In the library's collection are over 3,500 ancient inscribed bones and tortoise shells, 1.6 million volumes of traditional thread-bound books, over 1,000 volumes of documents from Dunhuang Grottoes, 12 million volumes of foreign-language books and magazines, and dozens of electronic databases. The library started to accept the submissions of official national publications in 1916, and became the main national database. It began to accept submissions of domestic electronic publications in 1987. It is also the country's ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) and NetworkInformationCenter. At present, the National Library of China has formed a digital library alliance with some 90 other libraries around the country, making joint efforts in promoting the development and application of China's digital public information service.
The Shanghai Library is China's largest provincial-level library. Of its collection, the over 1.7 million volumes of ancient documents are the most valuable, including 178,000 volumes of rare ancient books of 25,000 titles, many being the only copies extant in the world. The oldest document dates back 1,487 years.
The Library of the ChineseAcademy of Sciences provides a public science and technology documentation and information center with service, research, and educational functions. It owns more than 5,200,000 printed items in the domain of the basic disciplines of natural science and high technology, which are the most complete and systematic collections in China. The main tasks of the library are to serve China's scientific research, science and technology development and economic construction, and provide S&T information support for the national knowledge innovation system. By 2005, the Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences plans to become a national digital science library, inter-linking with the main large-scale libraries and information institutions both at home and abroad to provide a distributed and worldwide accessible networked information environment for researchers. On May 18, 2002, the Library of the ChineseAcademy of Sciences and ISI, based in Philadelphia in the United States, hosted a special event to observe the adoption by the ChineseAcademy of Sciences of ISI Web of Science. Held at the new state-of-the-art library in Beijing, the event featured speeches by Vin Caraher, Executive vice-president of ISI, and Ms. Xu Yinchi, curator of the Library of the ChineseAcademy of Sciences.
