Wuhan University Library

Wuhan University Library (Chinese:武汉大学图书馆) is the library system of Wuhan University, serving the university's students and faculty. It has 4 branches: Arts and Sciences Library, Engineering Library, Information Technology Library and Medical Library. The collection contains approximately 228,000 books & periodicals, 5,778 newspapers, 6,767,000 printing volumes, 6,590,000 e-books & e-magazines, 442 databases and 200,000 volumes of thread-bound ancient books in 2011.^[1]

History

The old library building

In 1913 the National Wuchang Higher Normal College was founded, it is said there was a small library. The library first appear in formal documents in 1917.^[2] In 1927, the library changed its name into National Wuhan University Library. At first there was only one book cataloger, about 3000 foreign language books, and a small amount of Chinese books. In 1936 the collection grew to about 140,000 books. From 1928 to 1936, Yang Mingzhi, Pi Zongshi and Yang Duanliu successively served as its director.^[3] The old library building on the top of Mount Shizi was built in 1935.^[4]

During the second Sino-Japanese War, the library moved to Leshan, Sichuan. During the bombing in Leshan on August 19, 1939 and the plundering of books by the Japanese in Hankou occurred on March 4, 1940, many volumes were lost, the library collection dropped to less than 100,000 volumes. It then served as an institution to preserve books, and did not allow people to borrow them. When the library returned to Luojia Hill after the war, the collection grew to 154,455 volumes.^[5]

After the war, the library receives a large amount of donation from United Kingdom and United States, the foreign language resources increased. In 1947，some left-wing students formed a new library called June 1 Library (六一图书馆), the collection of which were merged into the University Library after 1949.^[2]

References

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