The Guangzhou Library, established by the Guangzhou Municipal Government, was created for the benefit of the general welfare, and serve as a culture and education institution. The library is open to the public for free and its services are based on collecting, organizing, and reserving all categories of written knowledge and information including paper-based materials, audio-visual materials, and digital materials. The library offers lending of materials, reference and information service, exhibitions and lectures, art appreciation, cultural display, Internet service and spaces for learning, research and communication. The library also holds various kinds of reading promotion activities. With the vision of "connecting the world's wisdom and enriching reading life" and the overall goal of "building a human-centered, world-class metropolitan library", and the mission of building a system center, knowledge platform, learning platform, cultural platform and exchange platform, and adhering to the concept of "rationality, openness, equality and inclusiveness", the library is committed to promoting reading, exchange and sharing. Inspire rationality, inspiration and imagination, and advocate a harmonious and inclusive public sharing space.
The library is situated on Huacheng Square, the brand-new downtown of Guangzhou, being known as the city’s “living room”, facing the Canton Tower. Remarkable buildings nearby include the Guangdong Provincial Museum, the Guangzhou Opera House, and the Guangzhou 2nd Children’s Palace. Together these buildings form a cultural community, and become Guangzhou’s cultural window. The Guangzhou library covers an area of 21,000 square meters, while the total built-up area reaches 98,000 square meters. The library is so far one of the largest city libraries in the world. The library adopts “Beautiful Books” as the design concept, and the placement of the structure is based on the city’s new central axis. Taken from east to west, the elegant design of the north and south towers bares a resemblance to the Chinese character “之”. The cascading style of the “books” on the exterior is representative of the overlap of history and culture. At the same time, the design integrates the typical architectural concept of Cantonese arcade, expressing the element of Lingnan art. It was put on the list of the “Top 100 Attractions of the New Guangzhou City”.
The total collection of Guangzhou library reaches 11.66million volumes (items). There are 4500 seats and 686 computers for public use, 4000 wired internet connections and 100% wireless coverage rate. To achieve the integration of collection, borrowing, reading and consultation, the radio frequency identification technology (RFID), automatic document sorting system and self-service equipment are fully applied to provide convenient and efficient document information service for the public. Every day , we have 27000 public visits on average, 37,000 books on loan, which created the service record of public libraries in China and ranked among the top public libraries in the world.
