Library of Beijing University of chemical technology was established in 1958, situated at Hepingli south building, when it was called books-room and just had one librarian, three small rooms and a total collection of thousands of volumes. In summer vacation of 1960, books-room was settled in the new teaching-building with about 500 square meters and its name was changed into library. In July of 1964, new library-building with about 4200 square meters was completed, which was superior to others in that days and changed the condition of library fundamentally. By 1966 the collection of books and other bound volumes had grown to 20,000, librarians to 26, it had been scabble university library.

During the Cultural Revolution, the work of Library was in paralysis. In October of 1969, librarians were transferred to the cadre school of Zhumadian in Henan province. In December of that year, library-building was occupied by National Science and Technology Library. Since then, library had had no settled building for more than 10 years, and many volumes were lost in disorderly store.

To overcome the difficulty of unavailable collect-books without library building, information-rooms were founded in different departments in 1982, such as Chemical Engineering department, Materials Science and Engineering department, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering department, and Information Science and Technology department, the library took charge of adjusting and distributing books.

In 1984, electrical education- building was finished, whose three floors from first to third with 1200 square meters were used as reading-rooms of library. In 1986, the back library building was finished, the library area was expanded to 3000 square meters. By then library had had a comparatively stable building. Every information-room of departments was retracted gradually, the books there were returned to library. In 1990, 3 years after National Science and Technology library moving out of library building, an old stack room was put into use after reparation, which expanded the store-space of library at the same time. The number of books and periodicals in use was more than 300,000 volumes, except for those in mold and disrepair. The whole floor space of library building was 4900 square meters.
In 1999, under the care of ministry of education, Yi Fu library began to prepare to construct. With three –year effort, a brand- new library building was finished and put into use, which singled a second turn after the completion of library building in 1964. Yi Fu library is on a completely new stage in the Library's development, changing the situation of small floor space and dispersed buildings, making all the teachers and students have a spacious comfortable environment for reading and studying, suit with our modernized university.

Yi Fu library has 14,000 square meters of floor space, about 9,000 square meters of reading space, provides more than 1,500 seats. Two reading-rooms of CD and multimedia, with 50 new types of computers respectively, have for the first time been built to provide readers with electronic databases through the campus network. In addition, there is a reading-room for teachers, where teachers can not only have scientific actions, but also use computer to work freely.

For reader’s convenience, new library do not set small reading-rooms, but set a big reading-section in every floor, which is reading-section of newspaper, social-science periodical (including general science, art, literature, life, gym, youth) on the first floor, of Chinese books (nature science taking the priority) and section for borrow and return on the second floor, of Chinese science and technology periodical, Chinese social scientific books (mainly social science such as writing, history, philosophy, language ,culture, literature, art taking the priority) on the third floor, of foreign language scientific and technique periodicals and books on the forth floor; and periodicals for search, and of reference book on the fifth floor. There are reading-rooms of CD and multimedia in the sixth floor.

The development of library has relative flexural experience, but the system of collection always persists in technological-managing principle which characterizes chemistry and chemical engineering, and does its best to satisfy teaching and scientific research. By now the collection of our library has amount to over 68,100 volumes, in which Chinese books are 42,600, foreign books are 13,100, bound edition of Chinese periodicals are 2,300, and bound edition of foreign periodicals are 3,800. Besides, dissertations of our doctors and masters amount to 2,000, 6 kinds of databases of special reference. By the time when books and periodicals took the priority, special books and periodicals had had satisfied 60 percent of the use of the whole students and teachers. Since entering into network epoch, we have done our effort to buy many kinds of electronic resources such as CNKI, Wan Fang, VIP, KCBD and CA. Now, ELSEVIER and Kluweronlone databases of full text have been available in the Library. By now all the students and teachers can look through about 1200 kinds of full English paper online.

After many years, library, under the support of the whole students and teachers, has gone out of hardship and welcomes to present new state. In the future, we will always stick to the tenet of service for teaching and scientific research, continuously improve ours service content, and make efforts for the development of our university.

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