The University Library System: an eight-library network, the Learning Garden and rare book collections

The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Library system now comprises eight branch libraries with a physical collection of over 2.59 million volumes (per the 2023–24 annual report). The 24-hour Learning Garden sits in the basement of the main library, the Special Collections Reading Room holds more than 1,100 titles of rare Chinese editions in over 16,000 volumes spanning the Yuan dynasty to the Qianlong reign of the Qing, and the collections also include Hong Kong literary manuscripts and archives, and the archive of Nobel Literature laureate Gao Xingjian.

---

# How is the CUHK Library system organised?

The CUHK Library system is not a single building but a network of eight libraries distributed across the campus. According to the English Wikipedia article on the CUHK Library^※, the earliest branch can be traced to 1949, when New Asia College was founded, and the branches were gradually consolidated into one system after the University was formally established in 1963. The main University Library was established in April 1965^※; the present main building opened on 15 December 1972 and was extended with a new wing and a basement Learning Garden in 2012. As of 2023–24, the Library system employs 36 professional librarians and 189 support staff^※. The current University Librarian is Benjamin Meunier, who took office in April 2023^※.

The table below gives the essentials of the eight libraries:

According to English Wikipedia^※, the Architecture Library also moved to 24-hour opening in September 2012 after relocating with its parent school. Access to all eight libraries outside normal hours is controlled by the CU Link card. The main library is, in itself, a miniature campus history: the 1972 building solved the early problem of books scattered across the founding colleges, while the 2012 extension and basement Learning Garden turned it from a mere "book warehouse" into a hybrid space for study, creation and exhibition. The library also operates the CUHK History Gallery, a permanent display of the University's development since its foundation in 1963, drawing on historical artefacts and archives — from photographs and documents of the three founding colleges to the key milestones of merger and incorporation — gathering scattered institutional memory into one public-facing exhibition. On the external funding that supported the three colleges and the merger, see The "foreign patronage" network of the founding era.

The CUHK Library does not operate in isolation: it is a member of the consortium of the eight UGC-funded university libraries in Hong Kong. According to JULAC's official site^※, the eight institutions have formed the Joint University Librarians Advisory Committee (JULAC) since 1967 under the University Grants Committee (UGC) framework, sharing catalogues and interlibrary loans. The Hong Kong Academic Library Link (HKALL), a union catalogue spanning all eight universities, lets readers search more than 5 million titles and request items from other campuses, generally delivered to their home library within 24 hours. For CUHK staff and students, this means that beyond the physical collections, the printed holdings of the whole Hong Kong academic sector sit a click away.

---

# Why do the eight universities share one library system?

Moving from a "shared catalogue" to a "shared system" has been a big step of the past decade. According to the JULAC Shared ILS project page^※, the eight universities ran a Shared Integrated Library System (Shared ILS) project from May 2014 to July 2017, migrating to Ex Libris's cloud-based Alma (back-end management) and Primo (front-end discovery) in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. The same page records that the new system went into soft launch on 17 July 2017, integrating over 18 million bibliographic records and serving more than 380,000 readers. CUHK Library at the time also explained on a dedicated page why the change was needed^※: the old system had been in use for more than two decades and the vendor had stopped developing it, so the eight universities jointly hired consultants in May 2014 to assess the next generation of automation environment; previously, each university ran its own independent library-management system.

The immediate change for users: the HKALL union catalogue was folded into the Primo discovery interface, so inter-campus requests and self-service pickups are now handled through a single entry point. In ordinary terms, this means that in the CUHK Library search box, the library's own print holdings, the collections of the seven sister institutions and electronic resources all appear flat in one result list — one search, one request, and a book from across town arrives within a couple of days. This "shared back end, unified front end" approach has been the common direction of research libraries worldwide over the past decade.

---

# How large are the collections?

According to English Wikipedia's 2023–24 figures^※, the CUHK Library system holds:

E-books and print books together total more than 8.7 million titles, making this one of the largest academic library systems in Hong Kong. Collection strengths lie in Chinese studies, Chinese literature, history and philosophy, Hong Kong studies and medicine, closely matching the research profile of CUHK's faculties.

But size is not only counted in volumes. According to the Library's official Facts & Figures page^※, the main University Library alone provides over 2,400 reader seats and more than 230 computer terminals, making it by far the largest library in the system. Since the main building opened in 1972 and the basement Learning Garden was added in 2012, the space has been layered along four functions — "store, read, learn, create". Of the nearly two million visits a year, a good share are precisely for these seats and the late-night study space — for a university whose college system stresses staff–student cohabitation, the library is both a knowledge base and one of the few public living rooms on campus that never turns its lights off.

---

# What is the Learning Garden, and why can it stay open 24 hours?

The Learning Garden (LG/F) is an open study space in the basement of the University Library^※ that opened to staff and students in 2014 — the first library facility at CUHK to operate almost 24 hours a day, all year round. Outside normal opening hours, entry requires a CU Link card to confirm identity, ensuring that only campus members can use it. In the words of one on-site account, around 300 readers stayed on in the Learning Garden after the library closed at 10 pm^※, a vivid sign of its role as a late-night study stronghold.

The Learning Garden's design concept is a "flexible, reconfigurable learning environment": movable furniture, movable SMART Boards, group discussion rooms (equipped with laptops and LED screens) and the distinctive "Learning Path" — two S-shaped curved desks, each about 50 metres long, that naturally divide the space into a series of study bays. A pantry area is also provided so that staff and students can stay for long stretches.

In 2018, the Learning Garden was renovated and extended to include a Library MakerSpace, supporting the University-wide theme of "innovation and entrepreneurship". The MakerSpace's core facilities include:

• Creative Media Studio: a professional shooting room with simplified workflows for producing high-quality video;
• VR zone: augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) equipment and software;
• Fabrication Room: laser cutter, UV printer, embroidery machine, 3D printers and 3D scanner;
• High-performance workstations: multimedia machines (both Mac and PC) dedicated to video editing and graphic design.

The MakerSpace extends the library's traditional role of "acquiring knowledge" to "prototyping and digital fabrication" — students can not only read here but also build product prototypes, shoot short films and develop VR applications. This shift reflects the wider trend of university libraries evolving from "print warehouses" into "learning laboratories".

---

# What distinguishes the college and faculty branch libraries?

Each of the three founding colleges has its own branch library, and their names and histories carry real symbolic weight.

Ch'ien Mu Library (New Asia College): Named after Mr Ch'ien Mu^※, the founder of New Asia College. A towering figure in twentieth-century Chinese historiography, Ch'ien founded New Asia College in Hong Kong against great odds, and the library's name embodies New Asia's mission of preserving Chinese cultural heritage. Its collections focus on Chinese language and literature, Japanese studies and fine arts, and its basement study area is open 24 hours outside normal opening times.

Elisabeth Luce Moore Library (Chung Chi College): Named after the donor recognised when the library opened in 1971. The collections reflect Chung Chi's Christian higher-education tradition, covering music, religious studies, education, sports science and performing arts — a rare combination among Hong Kong academic libraries. The ground-floor reading room also offers 24-hour opening.

Wu Chung Library (United College): Named after its donor. Its collections centre on philosophy, Chinese-language monographs and general education, and it once held an audiovisual collection (part of which moved to the Learning Garden during the 2018 renovation). The basement also provides 24-hour study facilities.

Li Ping Medical Library: Located at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sha Tin, this is the specialist library connecting the Faculty of Medicine with its teaching hospital. Founded in 1980^※, it is open 24 hours all year round and serves medical students, resident physicians and clinical researchers; uniquely, it sits outside the campus, embedded in the daily life of a teaching hospital and sharing a building with the Faculty's clinical training (for the Faculty of Medicine system, see 11-medical-hospital/faculty-of-medicine.md).

The two specialist libraries built in the new century hug their faculties closely. The Architecture Library (established 1994; moved with the School of Architecture to its new premises in September 2012) serves the core architecture curriculum and design research, and switched to 24-hour opening when it relocated — a boon for students pulling all-nighters at the drawing board. The Lee Quo Wei Law Library (established 2004, on the 3rd–4th floors of Tin Ka Ping Building) is the law faculty's specialist library, housing common-law case reports, legislation and law journals. As English Wikipedia^※ puts it, this "specialist branch follows specialist faculty" layout is the underlying logic of the CUHK eight-library network — unified, yet each branch with its own centre of gravity.

---

# How large is the rare-book collection, and which titles are on the national list of precious ancient books?

The Chinese rare books held in the Special Collections Reading Room (on the 3rd floor of the University Library) constitute one of the most significant rare-book collections among Hong Kong academic libraries. According to an official CUHK press release^※:

「中大图书馆现藏中文善本逾 1,100 种、逾 16,000 册，版本年代涵盖元代(1271–1368)至清代乾隆年间（至 1795 年）。」

("The CUHK Library holds more than 1,100 titles and over 16,000 volumes of Chinese rare books, with editions spanning the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) to the Qianlong reign of the Qing dynasty (up to 1795).")

The formats are diverse: woodblock prints, multi-colour overprinted editions, manuscripts, and editions printed in Japan and Korea. According to earlier search results^※, the collection includes some 2 Yuan editions, 245 Ming editions, 490 Qing editions, and more than 150 Ming-Qing manuscripts and overseas editions.

In 2020, 15 rare-book titles from CUHK Library were selected for the sixth batch of the National Catalogue of Precious Ancient Books, issued by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism^※, six of which came from a 2008 donation by the Bei Shan Tang Foundation. According to the same press release, the sixth batch was announced on 13 November, and the same round also admitted 12 sets of ancient rubbings from the CUHK Art Museum; together with rubbings already listed in the fifth batch, the Art Museum now has 20 sets on the catalogue, all donated by Dr. J. S. Lee, founding chairman of the Art Museum's Management Committee and founder of Bei Shan Tang. Between the Library's 15 rare books and the Art Museum's 20 sets of rubbings, CUHK has 35 items in total on the National Catalogue — making it, to date, the only institution in Hong Kong so listed. Eligibility requires that the items were written or printed before 1912, compiled and bound in the traditional manner, and possess historical, intellectual and cultural value — the catalogue is proposed by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and ratified by the State Council. These rare books have all been digitised and can be browsed openly in the CUHK Digital Repository; on the rubbing collection and its provenance, see also Art Museum and Institute of Chinese Studies.

Beyond Chinese rare books, the Special Collections Reading Room also holds Western rare books (Western works published before 1900) and a collection of oracle bones — 44 pieces, donated in 1969 to United College by the descendants of Deng Erya in accordance with the dying wish of his mother Ip To Fu (transferred to the CUHK Library in 2015). Together with another 27 pieces in the Art Museum, donated by Li Yan, CUHK holds a total of 71 oracle bones^※, the largest collection in Hong Kong. The entire corpus has been digitised and is openly searchable in the "CUHK Oracle Bone Collection" digital album, with transcriptions. At 71 pieces the collection is not large, but each bone is a first-hand physical artefact for the study of Shang dynasty script and divination; putting every piece online with rubbings, transcriptions and bibliographic details means overseas scholars can verify the graphs without travelling to Hong Kong. This is a classic case of a niche special collection "spending small to gain much" through digitisation: the rarer the physical object, the more valuable a searchable high-resolution copy becomes.

---

# Whose manuscripts does the Hong Kong Literature Collection hold?

The Hong Kong Literature Collection is one of the flagship special collections of the CUHK Library. Its foundation was laid in 2002^※ by the distinguished Hong Kong literature scholar and writer Lo Wai-ming (pen name Xiaosi), who made a generous donation; further writers and literary figures have since added their materials, building a systematic archive of Hong Kong literature.

The collection takes in a wide range of materials related to Hong Kong literature, regardless of language, place of publication or format, covering monographs, periodicals, manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, archives and artefacts. The manuscript and archival holdings are especially precious. Known writers represented include:

Xiaosi was a pioneer in the study of Hong Kong literature, working for decades with what amounted to "one person doing the work of a team", dredging the traces of Hong Kong literature out of old newspaper literary supplements, out-of-print periodicals and writers' personal effects. Her decision to hand her life's collected materials to CUHK gave this long-neglected field a foundation to build on. Since then, manuscript archives from writers such as Xi Xi and Liu Yichang have followed, growing the collection from one scholar's private accumulation into a public archive of Hong Kong literature — for a city often accused of "having no literary tradition", this body of physical archives is itself the counter-evidence.

Alongside the collection runs the Hong Kong Literature Database. According to the database's official page (as of June 2025)^※, it holds more than 676,600 records, covering more than 200 Hong Kong literary periodicals and the literary supplements of 20 early Hong Kong newspapers. The newspaper literary supplement is the most important yet most fragile carrier of Hong Kong literature — many works were printed once, in a corner of some newspaper on some particular day, and never collected. Cataloguing and digitising these supplements one by one saves researchers years of sifting through old paper page by page. A digitisation drive began in 2015 when the library set up its digital initiatives unit (Research Support and Digital Initiatives), and collection materials are gradually becoming searchable online in the CUHK Digital Repository. For the broader literary and arts scene on campus, see Students' arts, Sir Run Run Shaw Hall and the campus radio.

---

# What is the Gao Xingjian Repository, and how did CUHK come to hold a Nobel laureate's materials?

The Gao Xingjian Repository is another major themed special collection of the CUHK Library. Gao Xingjian is the winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature^※, and his work has had a profound influence in Hong Kong and the wider Chinese diaspora. According to the CUHK Library's official page^※, the repository includes manuscripts, typescripts, paintings, photographs, books, posters and other materials donated by Gao himself.

The repository also has an international collaboration behind it. According to a CUHK Communications and Public Relations Office press release^※, the CUHK Library system signed an agreement with the library of the Université de Provence in France to cooperate in acquiring Gao Xingjian-related materials, covering five areas: website building, acquisitions, exchanges of holdings, interlibrary loans and staff exchanges. This international collaboration has made the CUHK Gao Xingjian Repository one of the most systematic documentation centres on Gao to date. All physical materials must be consulted in the Special Collections Reading Room on the 3rd floor of the University Library.

---

# What other themed collections are worth knowing about?

Beyond the highlights above, the Special Collections Reading Room holds a number of other themed collections. According to the library's themed collections page^※ and the special collections overview^※:

Minguo Collection: A systematic collection of materials published in mainland China between 1912 and 1949 across all subjects; more than 1,300 Minguo-period books have been digitised and are openly accessible in the CUHK Digital Repository.

Modern Chinese Drama Collection: First editions and rare out-of-print modern Chinese plays and valuable translations from the 1930s and early 1940s, including dramatic texts hard to find in other collections.

David Hawkes Archive: The British sinologist David Hawkes, whose translation of The Story of the Stone introduced Dream of the Red Chamber to the English-speaking world, left a research library donated by his literary executor John Minford. It became the first major acquisition of the Translation Archive established at CUHK in 2012, containing manuscripts, correspondence, notes and an unfinished study of a complete Yuan-dynasty drama. Earlier, in 1997, the Research Centre for Translation had already purchased Hawkes's own translation manuscripts — covering chapters 2 to 80 of the novel, a total of 2,210 pages^※ — which were later placed in the University Library, preserved, digitised and now openly available in the Digital Repository. This archive belongs to the same lineage as the CUHK Press and the translation flagship journal Renditions (see The Chinese University Press and Renditions).

Cultural Revolution image collection: Propaganda materials (satirical pictorials) from Guangzhou covering 1966–1977, valuable primary sources for understanding visual culture and political publicity during the Cultural Revolution.

Digitisation of Ming woodblock editions: All Ming-dynasty woodblock rare books have been scanned and are openly available in the Digital Repository. Since the digitisation initiative began in 2015^※, classical Chinese medical texts and Qing painting and calligraphy have also been brought into the digitisation programme.

Use of the Special Collections Reading Room requires an appointment, and physical consultation takes place on the 3rd floor of the University Library, Monday to Friday 9:00–17:30 (special arrangements can be made by phone or email). This threshold — "appoint, come in person, put on gloves" — stands in productive tension with the "search anywhere" openness of the Digital Repository: the more fragile and precious the original, the stricter the on-site rules needed to protect it, and the more reliance on high-resolution copies to separate "viewing" from "using" — the true unique copies stay in the stacks, while daily consultation happens on a screen.

---

# Where did the USC for China Studies Collection come from?

Alongside rare books and literary archives, the CUHK Library holds a body of modern materials that researchers in Hong Kong and abroad particularly prize — the USC for China Studies Collection. According to the CUHK Library's official page^※, the Universities Service Centre was founded in Hong Kong in 1963 to provide Western scholars of contemporary China with materials and a base; it was incorporated into CUHK in 1988 and renamed the Universities Service Centre for China Studies. Its holdings are regarded as one of the most complete and most open collections for the study of China after 1949, covering national and local newspapers, statistical yearbooks and local gazetteers at every administrative level from province down to township, organisational-history materials of the Chinese Communist Party at all levels, population and economic censuses, and "folk history" materials such as memoirs, biographies, correspondence, diaries and photographs. In the years when materials from mainland China could not easily flow outwards, this centre in Hong Kong was a crucial resource hub for the international scholarly community observing contemporary China; researchers coming to the city would often stay for long periods, systematically working through the local documents. This is also the origin of its name, the "service centre": first it offered scholars a place to stay and consult documents, and the collections grew up around that function, layer by layer.

In January 2021, the USC collection was incorporated into the University Library's special collections system and now resides on the 8th and 9th floors of the main library. Researchers from any institution, local or overseas, may consult it in person, and visiting scholars can book study carrels. The incorporation filled a gap in the CUHK special collections — which ran on three tracks of "rare books — literature — contemporary China" — by adding a contemporary strand built on first-hand social-science materials.

According to the USC collection guide^※, the holdings are broadly layered as follows: national, regional and topical newspapers; statistical yearbooks and local gazetteers at all administrative levels; Chinese Communist Party organisational-history materials; population censuses; and "folk history" materials such as memoirs, biographies, correspondence, diaries and photographs. One item frequently cited by researchers is the "New China Regional Newspaper Database", which holds 41 local newspapers spanning 1946 to 1972 — a rare continuous text for studying local governance and campaign history around the founding of the People's Republic. A dedicated contemporary-China-studies librarian provides reference support. Having moved from "a place to stay and consult" to a formal library special collection, the USC now serves not only the visiting scholars of its early years but any local or overseas researcher who walks through the door. This strand also intersects with contemporary China studies in the research section of this site; see Social science and think tanks.

---

# How is the collection going digital? The University Archives and the Digital Repository

Over the past decade, the CUHK Library has been pushing "consultation" from the reading room to the web. In December 2015, the Library established the University Archives, systematically acquiring and preserving University records of enduring historical value — meeting minutes, reports, internal and external correspondence — and building digital albums for online searching of CUHK publications and documents through the years. Physical archives still have to be requested in the Special Collections Reading Room, with applications submitted at least 3 working days in advance (according to the University Archives' official page^※).

Complementing this is the CUHK Digital Repository — the digitised results of the special collections mentioned above (rare books, Ming woodblock editions, Minguo books, Hong Kong literature, oracle bones, the Hawkes manuscripts) all converge there for open searching. In other words, the unique books that require appointments and gloved hands in the Special Collections Reading Room are gradually acquiring high-resolution copies that anyone can consult remotely. Digitisation is both protection and a way of "keeping history alive", as CUHK's official publication^※ puts it. For other library resources and the Library's place in Hong Kong's post-secondary landscape, see this site's Miscellany: publishing, libraries, arts and journals and Students' arts, Sir Run Run Shaw Hall and the campus radio.

---

# How is the library moving from "borrowing books" to "doing research"?

Digitisation puts old books online; another strand is the library's direct entry into research production. According to the Library's digital scholarship service page^※, the ground floor of the main library houses a Digital Scholarship Lab, providing space, tools, training and consultation for faculty and students working on geographic information systems (GIS), text mining, data visualisation and other digital-humanities and computational research — supporting the whole cycle from "topic selection" through "processing" to "publication". This dovetails with the digitisation of the rare-book collections: one track turns historical materials into machine-readable data, the other teaches researchers to read that data with computational methods. The Library has also built a Digital Scholarship Projects platform, bringing together digital-humanities outputs produced in collaboration with faculties, so that one-off research projects settle into durable, openly accessible online resources rather than dissolving when the project ends.

Supporting this is the CUHK Research Data Repository, which — according to the repository guide^※ — went live in September 2021, built on the open-source platform Dataverse. It allows University researchers to deposit data for global searching and reuse, and declares itself to follow the TRUST principles (Transparency, Responsibility, User focus, Sustainability, Technology) for data stewardship. The Library also operates an Open Access policy: contents of the Digital Repository are open by default unless otherwise stated. In short, the CUHK Library's role has expanded from "storing books, lending books and providing reading space" to "stewarding research data, supporting computational methods and advancing open access" — the shape of a research-university library in the 2020s, made concrete.

---

# Further reading

• The Chinese University Press and Renditions — the University's translation and academic publishing lineage, the other strand of the Gao Xingjian and Hawkes materials
• Students' arts, Sir Run Run Shaw Hall and the campus radio — the Art Museum, Hong Kong literature and campus arts connections with Yu Kwang-chung
• The "foreign patronage" network of the founding era — external funding for the three colleges and their branch libraries, and the merger background
• Art Museum and Institute of Chinese Studies — the other half of the rubblings, the Bei Shan Tang donation and the national rare-book catalogue
• Social science and think tanks — where the USC contemporary China collection sits in the research landscape
• Miscellany: publishing, libraries, arts and journals — overview of CUHK academic resources and Hong Kong's post-secondary landscape

---