The Shenzhen Library was called Baoan Library in old days. The new building of it is a large modern culture facility, which is invested by the Shenzhen Government. It sites in a new administrative culture center district, in front of the beautiful Lotus Hill (Lianhua Mountain). It occupies an area of 29,612 sq m and has a total construction area of 49,589 sq m. The collection capacity has reached 4 million items, and the new library receives 8 thousand reader-visiting times per day on average while provides 2,000 seats and 3,000 network nodes.

The new library building has unique appearance, aborative conception and modern sense. Instead of a traditional mode, the construction mode has changed into a full open, large space, nonseparated ‘modulus pattern’ layout. Its completion adds a characteristic culture scenery to this young but energetic Shenzhen.

The Shenzhen Library pays attention to the application of new technology, and will be the first library to introduce DILAS system and the technology of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) in China. ILAS (Integrated Library Automation System), which was developed by the Shenzhen Library had the proprietary intellectual property rights and was appraised as the Promotion Project of Major Science and Technology Achievement by the Ministry of Culture, it has near 3,000 users in China. DILAS (Digital Library Architecture Study and Application Platform Development Project) is the National Science and Technology Project issued by the National Economy Planning Committee, and will be launched in the Shenzhen Library. Shenzhen library will be the first library used the technology of RFID in China. The utilization of RFID will bring the all-around changes of library operation management mode, and will ensure that readers utilize the library efficiently and provide a powerful technical safeguard against theft of collections.

As a center of printed materials collection & utilization, as well as a information resources exploitation center at Shenzhen, the whole library collects more than 1.8 million books and periodicals, approximately one million varied electronic and network resources, it serves 3 million reader-visiting times per year. After its completion, it will continue to play its functions of a documentation and information center and a regional library network center, further more it is going to be built up a large modern public library which integrates popularity, research and digitalization. The new library will achieve the top-level of domestic libraries and is one of advanced libraries in the world.

According to economy, society and culture development status of Shenzhen area, the development of the new library will focus on special subject resources such as high technology, commerce & trade, fashion, law etc and Shenzhen local literatures as library’s featured resources.

In order to facilitate readers, all books in reading rooms will be open-shelf. The library totally has six floors service areas: the ground floor is serials service area* mainly for Chinese newspapers & periodicals reading and loan, the separate reading room for the blind is also here. The first and the second floors are book lending areas, providing reading and lending services of Chinese and foreign language books. The third floor is information service area for multimedia audiovisual service, electronic reading, information enquiry service, network service and so on. The fourth floor is special subject collection service area mainly providing special subject reading and consulting services for research users, special subject sections include trade, law, fashion, an information resource center of ASEAN Free-Trade Area (FTA) as well as foreign language serials section. The fifth floor is special collections area providing Shenzhen local literatures, HK, Macao & Taiwan literatures, preserved books, micro books and ancient books reading services.

The new library will keep on satisfying the maximum needs of all readers with convenient and prompt commonweal services. The library will be open continuously from 9:00am to 21:00pm every day except Monday, 72 hours per week. These services are carried out in ways of “full open, entering library without a library card, layered management, one card pass”, which open to all citizens without any id cards for general reading, general services are free of charge, and only printing, photocopy etc are chargeable at a cost price.