ABOUT THE LIBRARY OF USTC

2007-10-10

In the year of 1958, University of Science and Technology of China ( USTC ) was founded; at the same time, its library was established. In 1970 the university moved with to Heifei city, Anhui province from Beijing, the Capital; so did the library. After more than 40 years of development, USTC Library has already made as great progress as USTC has made. At present, the library covers total area of 35,000 m2, with all book stacks open-shelfed and over 3,000 seats available in all 20 reading rooms. It can provide all the readers, the faculty and students, with various services like lending, reading and photocopying. Furthermore, its 3 branches, respectively in the west, east and south campus, are all equipped with book-return-boxes for the convenience of readers.

 

USTC Library is rich in literary resources in many scientific fields as mathematics, mechanics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, geoscience, biology, materials science, mechanical engineering, power and electronic engineers, nuclear science and technology, electrocommunication and automatic control, and computer science technology. The collection include 1.73 million volumes of foreign and Chinese books, together with a large variety of periodicals (4,000 kinds of printed foreign language periodicals and 3,000 kinds of Chinese periodicals). Each year, the numbers increase at the rate of  about 80,000 volumes of Chinese books and 2,000 volumes of foreign language books. In addition, the library orders 400 kinds of foreign periodicals in original, and 3,000 kinds of Chinese periodicals each year. And all collections are provided OPAC inquiry.

 

To further satisfy the faculty’s and students’ literature information needs, the library has made great effort in carrying out the electronic resources construction. Now USTC Library has many famous foreign language abstract databases such as Web of science, Web of proceedings, JCR, Ei, INSPEC, CA, PQDD and others; foreign language full text databases such as Elsevier, Springer, JohnWiley, EBSCO, IEL, PQDD, SPIE, ACS, ACM, APS, AIP, IOP, RSC, OSA, ASME, ASCE, Science, Nature, Cell and others; Chinese databases such as the CNKI academic periodicals, WanFang data resource system, the Vip resource system, the photocopying materials of the Renmin University of China and Superstar e-book system, the Apabi e-book system and others. Through the campus network the faculty and students may use 500,000 volumes of  Chinese e-books, 50,000 volumes of foreign language e-books, 12,000 kinds of foreign language electronic periodicals, 8,000 kinds of Chinese electronic periodicals, 20,000 kinds of PQDD (ProQuest Digital Dissertations). "Novelty Search Center of USTC attached to the Chinese Academy of Science”  was established in the Library by the Chinese Academy of Science in 2004 aiming at providing novelty search service for all the researchers inside the university or outside as well as in enterprises.

 

 The rich printed and electronic academic literatures have fully guaranteed the information needs of all the key discipline researchers, and the guaranteed rate of literatures exceeds 95%. Moreover, the library not only actively develops the relation with CAS information system and the CALIS key universities, but also participates in the interlibrary loan service system through which readers can obtain urgently needed literature materials from both home and abroad.

 

With the support of the nation’s “211” and "985" project, USTC Library has achieved a lot in the network and digitalization construction. It has 2000MB ethernet connecting with the campus network, and by applying the route division technology, the virtual library sub-network has been set up to supervise and control the distribution of information resources, the computer equipments and the operation service flow in all the 3 branches of the USTC Library. Readers may conduct their multimedia study as well as the literature information retrieval in the electronic reading rooms in its west and south branch. More than that, the wireless equipment has been installed in all the 3 branches so that readers can have access to the internet without any barrier. USTC Library has implemented Hui-Wen system as its public Web-based catalog and as the support system for user service and processing functions. Hui-Wen system has computerized and networked the library operation successfully. With Z39.50, all the library collections are provided with OPAC inquiry service. At the same time, the library has established the Web server, Hui-Wen server and mirror server of many databases, and developed the multimedia teaching selection and broadcast system, compact disc system attached to books, the library reader forum and other sections. The contents on the library main page are unceasingly on the renewal.

 

USTC develops with innovative objectives, cultivating top-leveled scientific and technical talents in the emerging, the frontier, the interdisciplinary scientific fields. USTC is devoted to the construction of the world well-known high-leveled research university. As one of the 9 high-leveled national key universities, it plays the leading role in the implementation of the National Knowledge Innovation Project. During the course of constructing high-level research university, which aims at being high-qualitied, reasonable-structured, moderate-scaled with distinctive feature, USTC Library, the strong supporting platform of teaching and scientific research, always lays emphasis on the construction of the collection resources, network and digital platform, as well as the information service. Therefore, it has ranked into one of the most advanced university libraries in the nation.

 

USTC Library bears always in mind that the readers’ demand and technical progress is the driving developing force, and its staffs will make united effort to acquire new knowledge, techniques, experience and ways of service, hoping to provide prompt information resource service for readers in a even deeper and broader scope.