ABOUT THE LIBRARY OF USTC

Introduction 

With the establishment of the USTC, the Library of USTC was founded in Beijing in September 1958. In 1970, the library moved south with the university to Hefei, capital of Anhui Province. After more than half a century of development, the library has reached a new level in terms of literature resources and infrastructure construction, realized a new service model based on the network computer environment, made important contributions to the university’s talent training and scientific research, and become an important supporting platform for the USTC to build a world-class university.

 

At present, our university has three library areas: the library on the east campus, the library on the west campus, and the library on the south campus. The total construction area is about 41,783 square meters (The library on the east campus covers 17000, the library on the west campus covers 18,587, and the library on the south campus covers 6196). There are more than 5,000 seats for self-study and discussion and communication. The physical collection of Chinese and foreign books and periodicals is 2.28 million volumes (including the reference rooms of the departments), including more than 40,000 volumes of special collections and reinvented rare books. By building a high level of digital library literature system to guarantee the university’s teaching and research needs, the library has introduced and shared more than 180 Chinese and foreign databases (platform), including the mainstream of domestic and foreign authoritative academic databases and retrieval tools. Through the campus network, teachers and students can easily access 2.46 million Chinese e-books, 400,000 foreign e-books, more than 60,000 Chinese and foreign e-journals, 12.57 million domestic and international master and doctoral dissertations, as well as a large number of conference papers and patent documents, science and technology reports and other materials. Since the library provides network information services 24 hours a day, teachers and students can access various database resources through the campus network, realize the quick and convenient “one-stop” retrieval of all kinds of resources through the library’s Chinese and foreign language discovery system, and obtain a variety of books and periodicals query services, information services through the network. In September 2018, a small library was opened in the Institute of Advanced Technology, University of Science and Technology of China. From September 2021, a more modern and brand-new library will be gradually put into use on the High-tech Campus of the USTC to provide information services and patent and intellectual property services.

 

At present, our library has 14 book stacks and reading rooms of various types, which are open 7*14 hours a week, and adopt RFID technology to implement open self-service borrowing and returning services. The library is one of the core exchange nodes of the campus network and has a good network application environment. The wireless network covers the whole library, and the reading room, study room and leisure area are equipped with a large number of network ports and ground plug-in power supplies, providing a good reading and learning environment for teachers and students. On the second floor of the Library of East Campus, there is a Teaching and Learning Center of Talent Book Show, covering an area of about 1100 square meters, which is divided into eight display areas of subject textbooks and reference books, teaching discussion area, press area and newspaper reading service area. The subject exhibition area displays about 13,200 Chinese and foreign textbooks and reference books in accordance with 8 subject groups including mathematics, physics, chemistry, ground and air science, information science, engineering science, life science and medicine, and humanities. The library of the west campus has a 4,000-square-meter Future Learning Center, which is divided into more than 20 learning and communication spaces for different purposes, including study rooms, language learning and international exchange centers, online course recording and broadcasting rooms, editing rooms, and teacher workshops, etc. It has become one of the most important places for teachers and students to exchange knowledge on campus.

 

With the development of technology, information service work has become more and more deeper and permeated. The subject librarian system is implemented to actively serve the needs of teaching, scientific research and management. The library offers a variety of information literacy courses and trainings, and provides various lectures on the utilization of literature resources and information analysis for undergraduates, postgraduates, international students, and teachers and students of the remote integration college. Through interlibrary loan and document delivery service, readers can also obtain resources which are not purchased by our library from domestic and foreign libraries and document information systems.

 

The library implements the service concept of “serving the society”. It is the “Featured Branch Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Document Information Center”, “Science and Technology Novelty Retrieval and Consultation Center, , University of Science and Technology of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences “, “CALIS Anhui Document Information Service Center”, “General Library of Anhui Academy Digital Library”, “National Patent Document Service Network” and “TISC of World Intellectual Property Organization”, providing document guarantee for scientific research and academic innovation in Anhui Province and even the whole country.

 

With the goal of building a first-class research library, the library will continuously optimize the document resource system and technical platform, expand and innovate service functions, and build it into the university’s the Cultural Center, Civilization Center and Exchange Center in order to make greater contributions to the university’s construction of a world-class university with Chinese characteristics and USCT style.