For Xie Meng'en, a doctoral student in Chinese language and literature at Peking University, seeing an ancient book on a screen is no substitute for encountering the original.
"Even the most exquisite catalogue is ultimately secondhand," he says. "Only when you face the original can you really develop an eye for it."
At Peking University Library, Xie is among many students with access to a collection of about 1.6 million volumes and items of ancient documents, including more than 20,000 titles of rare books totaling over 200,000 volumes, according to Zhong Di, director of the library's ancient documents resources service center.
The collection dates back to 1898, when a library was established alongside the Imperial University of Peking, the predecessor of Peking University. Over the following decades, the holdings grew to include more than 400,000 volumes from Yenching University after the 1952 restructuring of China's higher education system.
In 2013, the library repurchased the Okura Collection, comprising more than 900 titles and nearly 30,000 volumes, after it had been sold to Japan in the 1910s.
"The Okura Collection was the first large-scale repurchase of dispersed Chinese classics from overseas by a national collecting institution after the founding of New China," Zhong says.
The library has also brought its ancient collections into classrooms. Since 2018, its ancient documents service center has supported teaching activities more than 100 times, involving over 1,500 teachers and students and using more than 650 types of ancient documents, totaling over 2,000 volumes.
"By bringing the classroom into the library, teachers and students can come into close contact with rare ancient books and better appreciate the characteristics of our collection," Zhong says.
Elsewhere in the library, the focus is on putting books directly within students' reach.
The General Reading and Reference Hall, upgraded in 2023, has a wave-shaped bookshelf inspired by the ripples of Weiming Lake, holding about 20,000 teaching-reference books. Around 4,000 general-education books are also placed nearby.
"The idea is that people are in the books, and the books are at hand," says Zhang Naishuai, director of the library's Knowledge Resources Services Center.
The library is also expanding access to digital tools.
Liu Yaqiong, a librarian at the Collaborative Services Center, says the library's Data Sharing and Reading Space provides students with computing resources for tasks including 3D modeling, video editing and AI applications.
Students can use AI tools for assisted reading and writing and to build personal knowledge bases. Some have used them to animate elements of ancient paintings, summarize academic papers and create mind maps.
The library has also organized AI lectures, workshops and student-led sessions, covering practical applications, as well as topics such as AI ethics.
Through its "class librarian" program, the library assigns a librarian to each undergraduate freshman class. The librarian joins the class WeChat group and provides information and research support throughout the students' university years.
The program now covers more than 110 freshman classes and about 10,000 students each year, according to Liu.
Meanwhile, the library's ancient-book restoration team continues to prepare old volumes for further use. About 3,000 volumes a year receive emergency treatment, while around 400 undergo more focused restoration.
"Emergency restoration on site is like an emergency room in a hospital," says Zhang Yanxia, a librarian involved in ancient-book restoration.
The team also works with a Chinese book history course, where restorers demonstrate traditional binding techniques and guide students in making thread-bound books themselves.
