Beijing Library is the largest building area and the largest collection of books in China, and the only national library in China.

The predecessor of Beijing Library is "Shi Jing Library", which was built in the second year of Xuantong in Qing Dynasty (19 10) and officially opened in 19 12. Beitu Old Museum is located in Jinwen Street, Xicheng District, with a building area of more than 30,000 square meters and a collection of books of 10 million. In order to meet the people's growing cultural needs, the state started construction of the new Beitu Museum near Zizhuyuan in June 1983+0 1, and completed it in July 1987.

The building area of Beitu New Library is 6.5438+0.4 million square meters, which consists of 654.38+0.3 buildings, including basic library building, social science reading and research building, newspaper library, audio-visual materials building, exhibition hall and lecture hall. In terms of building scale, it is second only to the Library of Congress in the world. Today, the total construction area of the new site and the old site of Beijing Library is 6.5438+0.7 million square meters, and it can hold 20 million books. The new library alone has 36 reading rooms with more than 3,000 seats and can receive 7,000 to 8,000 readers every day. Readers can also choose more than 654.38+0 million books on the shelves.