On August 29, 2023, the new Zhejiang Library officially opened its door to the public, unveiling a fresh chapter in the public library development of Zhejiang Province.

The new Zhejiang Library

The new library is located by Qiantang River, the biggest river in Zhejiang Province. With a total investment of ￥660 million and a size of 85,000 square meters, this library has been hailed as a new cultural landmark in the Province. It is a comprehensive, research-oriented, and modern library, serving as the knowledge and information hub and library network center of Zhejiang Province. Beside the new main library, Zhejiang Library already has five branches: Shuguang Road Library, Daxue Road Library, Gushan Road Library, Jiaye Library and Deqing Stackhouse, covering an area of 140, 000 square meters and rising to the second largest provincial public libraries in China.

Zhijiang Cultural Center

This new magnificent building has a total of 11 floors, 2 underground and 9 above ground. The bottom floor serves as public parking facility and large-scale intelligent storage. The -1 floor includes multifunctional lecture hall, exhibition hall, studios, HIFI room, recording studio and communication square. Various theme reading areas, well-appointed study areas and vibrant activity areas are distributed from 1st floor to 5th floor. The 6th floor is ancient book stack, and the 7th to 9th floors are designated as office areas.

The overall design of Zhijiang Library adheres to the concept of openness and integration, breaks the boundaries between different floors, areas and collections, and integrates the functions of reading, lending, self-study, communication, leisure, and activity participance together. In the future, intelligent services will gradually realize the library, such as real-time intelligent positioning and mobile phone navigation services for book searching by using book image recognition technology, book delivery by using intelligent robots, and readers' accurate reading recommendation. At the same time, the library focuses on enhancing the function as a public space for communication and provides readers with a more humanized, comfortable, warm and free reading experience.

Communication Square

The Library hall on the first floor, known as the "Temple of Books", is one of the most distinctive spaces in the library that intergrates collection, reading promotion and appreciation together. The hall is encircled by towering five-storey bookshelves that house an impressive collection of nearly 100,000 books. On the dome, there is a sizable controllable Led screen, which casts beautiful reflections with the“sea of books”surrounding the hall. When visitors enter the hall, they may find themselves in a boundless knowledge universe.

“If there is a heaven on earth, it must be what this temple looks like”.

Temple of Books

On the west side of the hall, there is a General Lending Area and an Accessible Reading Area, connected to the hall via a corridor. One side of the corridor is decorated with a wall presenting a collection of periodicals, while the opposite side features an electronic screen displaying real-time service data of all public libraries in Zhejiang province. These data includes the number of collection, exhibitions and visitors, provinding a visual digital service for readers.

 Electronic Screen and Periodical Wall  

The other side of the hall is the Literature Lending Area, which is usually the most popular area for general readers. 50,000 literary books are stored here, including essays, poetry, novels and other genres. The bookshelves are staggered and interspersed with neat and comfortable seats, where readers can spend a pleasant time of reading.

Literature Lending Area

To the north of the hall, there stands a grand staircase that spans the first, second, and third floors, known as the "Great Ladder of Knowledge." The roof of the staircase is adorned with scroll-shaped strip lights, symbolizing the pursuit of knowledge and the idea of "reading ten thousand books and traveling ten thousand miles." The Great Ladder of Knowledge not only provides readers with more places for reading, rest and activities, but also represents that we are on the road of learning and knowledge, and only by climbing bravely and moving forward can we improve ourselves and obtain the truth.

Great Ladder of Knowledge

During the opening period, the exhibition “Civilization and Imprint: The Library Development Progress” is shown here.

Civilization and Imprint: The Library Development Progress

Children’s Area is on the second floor, including reading areas for young children and teenagers, parent-child reading area, children's activity area, training room, and an immersive reading space called the "Light and Shadow Reading Planet".

Children’s Reading Area

Light and Shadow Reading Planet

Besides that, a maze of books for children is formed with huge bookcases on the second floor. The winding paths between them lead children to explore the secret world of reading. The shelves are stacked with brightly colored storybooks in different styles. Opening each book is like pushing a new mysterious door.

Maze of Book

Stepping into the third floor, you will find two glazed walk-in bookstacks. More than 100,000 volumes of books are settled here. A marble staircase is between the two bookstacks, which connects the third and fourth floors with Roman columns on both sides, showcasing the fusion of classical and modern beauty.

Glazed Walk-in Bookstacks

The Literature and Art Reading Area also spans the third and fourth floors. Five large terraces going up are all equipped with bookshelves and reading seats, creating a sense of “ mountain of books”. A total collection of nearly 70,000 volume of books cover themes in Chinese painting, calligraphy, architecture and gardening, interior decoration, photography, Western painting, film, comic illustration, graphic design and other fields. The walls of the entire reading area are all large bookshelves, which have a variety of functions such as visual appreciation, atmosphere creation, and collection display, so that readers can appreciate, read, study and rest here.

Literature and Art Reading Area

There are also a number of study areas on the fourth floor. They are designed in various styles and themes, to meet the learning and research needs of different readers. As a high-quality reading space and a new participatory learning platform, the study area provides creative courses, reading salons, art exhibitions, seminars, lectures and other activities for individuals and teams with certain literary and artistic expertise and interests, so as to cultivate the public's aesthetic and innovative spirit.

Study Areas

The fifth floor is the ancient books reading and exhibition area, covering a space of 3,500 square meters, which is the largest ancient books reading area in China. 100.000 photolithographic editions of ancient books are all open-shelf collections available for readers.

Here, you will find the treasure of Zhejiang Library, Wenlan Pavilion Siku Quanshu. 

Wenlan Pavilion Siku Quanshu

Ancient Books Reading Area

The opening of the new main library signifies a new stage of development for Zhejiang Library. It aims to provide more convenient and efficient services not only to library users in Zhejiang Province but also in China and even to visitors from all over the world.