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On September 9th, 1909, government of Qing Dynasty authorized preparations for constructing the Capital Library (the National Library predecessor), and mobilized books from various storages, including the cabinet stack, the imperial academy, south stack room of the imperial college, “Complete Library of Four Branches of Literature” (Wenjinge Sikuquanshu), and relic collections of Dunhuang manuscripts as the basic collection. In 1916, Ministry of Education ordered that all published books recorded in the Interior Ministry shall be deposited in the Capital Library, and from then on, the capital Library began to function as national library.
During the past years, the Capital Library has been renamed to the National Beiping Library, Beijing Library, and on December 12th, 1998, the name was set to the National Library of China. Through multiple means including government transfers, donations and purchases, the collection has reached up to 27 million volumes/items with 200TB digital resources. Nowadays, the floor area of the library buildings totaled around 250,000 M2 which has been recognized as the largest in Asia, and the 3rd largest throughout the world, and serves governmental legislative organs, educational and research institutions as well as the public.
Mr. Miao Quansun, Chen Yuan, Liang Qichao, Cai Yuanpei, Ren Jiyu were respectively appointed director of the National Library of China at different times, who united social elites for the construction of the library, and trained numerous library professionals. Also, those generations of librarians, put their energy on library work by serving the public and pushing innovation which have built this plaza of knowledge as well as the culture of the National Library of China. During the thirty years of reforms and opening up, the National Library was focusing on exploitations and reforms, and resulted in leap develop-ment as well as many significant national cultural projects. The National Library of China, with the strategy of developing library upon talents, science & technology and services, will play a more important role in promoting culture development and constructing a harmonious society. |
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