HKU's library system — from two rooms in 1912 to eight libraries and four million volumes

The University of Hong Kong (HKU) comprehensive information database · 12 misc modules This article examines the HKU Libraries (HKUL) as a system: how it grew from two rooms in 1912 to today's main library plus multiple branch libraries. For an overview of the combined library and museum landscape, see libraries-and-museums.md; for the architectural history of the Fung Ping Shan Building (home to the Chinese Library/Museum), see ../12-misc/fung-ping-shan-library-museum.md. This site's 00–12 reference areas are named from the record.

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# 1. The starting point: two rooms in 1912

• According to the Wikipedia entry on HKU Libraries^※, the Main Library was founded in October 1912, initially housed in about 288 square metres across two rooms;
• Per the same entry^※, HKUL is Hong Kong's oldest academic library, as old as the University itself.

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# 2. The Main Library's expansion: Old Wing (1961) and New Wing (1991)

• Per the Wikipedia entry^※, the Main Library's Old Wing opened in 1961 and was refurbished in 1992/93; the New Wing opened in 1991;
• Per the Wikipedia entry^※, the Main Library alone holds more than 1.2 million volumes; it houses a Rare Book Room rich in materials on China and the Far East.
• 1961 was also the year the Fung Ping Shan Library's Chinese-language collections moved into the Main Library (see ../12-misc/fung-ping-shan-library-museum.md) — the opening of the Old Wing and the integration of the Chinese collections were two milestones of the same year.

The Main Library's holdings are themselves a vast, all-disciplinary system. According to the official HKU Libraries "Main Library Collections" page^※, the collections are shelved by Dewey Decimal Classification, spanning the arts, education, humanities, architecture, social sciences and technology; beyond general books, there are dedicated education collections (Old Wing, fourth floor — textbooks, teaching methods and public examination papers), music collections (Old Wing, first floor — scores and musicology materials), audio-visual materials (New Wing, first floor — older media such as VHS, laserdiscs, audio tapes, CDs and slides), leisure reading and the Po Chung's Collections. It also serves as a depository library for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations (UN), bringing international organisations' public documents within reach of local readers — this, together with the medical library's role as a WHO depository (see Section 4), makes HKU Libraries a point of convergence for several international bodies' materials in Hong Kong.

Half a century on, the Main Library's centre of gravity has shifted from "collection density" to "learning space." Today, Level 3 is a "learning commons"-style facility^※, offering different kinds of seating and equipment for reflective solo study and collaborative group discussion alike — a world away from the Old Wing era's "rows of shelves plus fixed reading desks." In February 2026, the ground floor also completed a renovation, which the University's opening address described as a manifestation of its "long-term commitment to teaching and research" (see Section 7 of this article). From the Old Wing to the New Wing, and on to the learning commons and the renewed ground floor, the physical history of the Main Library is itself a record of how the University's answer to the question "what should a library be?" has changed over time.

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# 3. Eight branch libraries, each with its own lineage

HKU Libraries is not a single building but a system of one main library plus several specialist branches. The origins of each branch are worth recording in some detail:

Background note: The Yu Chun Keung Medical Library's "trace to 1887" carries particular symbolic weight — it connects the medical lineage of HKU Libraries to the College of Medicine where Sun Yat-sen studied (see ../00-overview/history.md). The naming of the branches (Yu Chun Keung, Lui Che Woo, Tin Ka Ping, Ko Wong Hui Wun) also largely reflects donors, echoing HKU's culture of naming in honour of benefaction (see ../08-finances/benefactors-and-donors.md).

It is worth noting that this list itself is in flux. The newest member, the Ko Wong Hui Wun Digital Art Library, opened on Level 3 of the Main Library in 2024^※ and is the youngest of the eight; its "digital" positioning marks an extension of the branch format from "specialist book room" toward "digital resources and art learning space." The Tin Ka Ping Education Library, meanwhile, had the substance first (established 1978^※) and the name later (named in 2017), while the Fung Ping Shan Library had collections first (accumulating from 1912) and a dedicated building later (completed 1932). "Eight libraries" is a static number; beneath it, each institution has its own timeline of establishment, relocation, naming and reinvention.

The branches' distribution is, in effect, a map of the disciplines. The eight libraries are not scattered at random; they broadly follow the logic that "the library follows the faculty." The law library moved up to the Centennial Campus with the Faculty of Law in 2012; the medical library is permanently housed in the Faculty of Medicine Building on Sassoon Road, Pokfulam — the only branch consistently located off the main campus (see Section 4); the dental, music, education and other specialist branches sit close to their respective teaching and research units. The virtue of this "specialist collections next to specialist staff and students" arrangement is that materials are within easy reach and librarians know their subjects; the cost is that the collections are split across several sites, and cross-disciplinary readers often find themselves shuttling between libraries — which is precisely the gap that HKALL inter-library lending and digital collections (see Sections 6 and 8) are meant to close. From the smallest branch — the Music Library (which began in 1982 in two rooms of the Main Building^※, almost a miniature re-enactment of the Main Library's own two-room origin story in 1912) — to the law library's move to a new campus, the differences in scale and form among the eight libraries themselves reflect how unevenly the need for collections is distributed across HKU's disciplines.

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# 4. The Yu Chun Keung Medical Library: a lineage from 1887 and a WHO depository

Of the eight branches, the one with the longest history and the most unusual pedigree is the Yu Chun Keung Medical Library. It is not a later offshoot of HKU Libraries; rather, its collection's starting point reaches back to before the University even existed.

According to the official HKU Libraries page^※, the medical library "can trace its origins to the founding of the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese in 1887" — the very college that was the precursor of the HKU Medical Faculty, and where Sun Yat-sen studied medicine in his early years (see ../00-overview/history.md and ../11-medical-hospital/). In other words, if one counts by collection lineage, one thread within HKU Libraries is twenty-five years older than the Main Library of 1912.

This branch's name and premises have changed several times. Per the official page^※, it "was formerly known as the Lee Hysan Medical Library, located in the Patrick Manson Building," and was later renamed the Yu Chun Keung Medical Library in memory of Mr. Yu Chun Keung's generous donation; since January 2002 it has occupied the Faculty of Medicine Building^※, on the medical campus at Sassoon Road, Pokfulam — physically separate from the main campus on Bonham Road where the Main Library sits. It is the only branch of the system permanently located away from the main campus.

Its most weighty role is as a node in the international health-information network. Per the official page, the medical library has been a World Health Organization (WHO) depository library since 1993^※, receiving and opening up WHO publications to readers. The "depository" designation is no honorary title: as a designated WHO repository, it systematically receives and preserves WHO technical reports, statistical yearbooks and policy documents, letting HKU's medical students, faculty and public-health researchers consult first-hand publications of this global health-governance system without travelling to Geneva — a genuine research advantage in fields such as infectious disease and public-health policy. Its collections centre on biomedical and health-science electronic resources, multimedia and print materials, serving the teaching, continuing education, research and clinical needs of the LKS Faculty of Medicine (for the Faculty's own origins, see ../11-medical-hospital/). A single library carrying both "the starting point of the Faculty's history in 1887" and "Hong Kong's link in the WHO global materials network" — that span of time and institutional weight is unique among the eight.

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# 5. The Lui Che Woo Law Library: one donor, two rounds of support

If the Yu Chun Keung Medical Library testifies to the length of a lineage, the Lui Che Woo Law Library records the continuation of benefaction — the same donor, stepping in twice over more than a decade, lifting a branch from a name on the door to a dedicated building on a new campus.

According to the official HKU Libraries page^※, the law library was named in 1997 following a donation from Dr. Lui Che Woo; in 2010 Dr. Lui donated again, substantially enriching the collections and supporting the library's move in 2012 into new premises on the Centennial Campus^※. This three-step sequence — "1997 naming → 2010 top-up → 2012 relocation and expansion" — tracks the Faculty of Law's own growth: the Centennial Campus is HKU's new teaching and research precinct, opened in 2012 (see ../05-campus/), and the law library moved "up the hill" with the Faculty, upgrading from a room in the old campus to a specialist stronghold on the new one.

This thread also ties the present article back to HKU's culture of naming in recognition of donors. From Fung Ping Shan (Chinese Library), Yu Chun Keung (medicine), Tin Ka Ping (education) to Lui Che Woo (law) and Ko Wong Hui Wun (digital art), the HKU library system is almost a miniature history of philanthropy inscribed in library names — behind every lintel sits an individual or family making a long-term bet on a particular discipline's collections (for details on donors, see ../08-finances/benefactors-and-donors.md).

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# 6. Scale and positioning

• Per the Wikipedia entry^※, the system as a whole holds approximately 4 million volumes, more than 24,000 journal titles and over 2,800 reader seats; the Main Library alone accounts for more than 1.2 million volumes, with a Rare Book Room rich in materials on China and the Far East.
• Per the same entry^※, HKUL is a member of the Joint University Librarians Advisory Committee (JULAC), sharing resources with other university libraries across Hong Kong.

A word on the "total holdings" figure: different sources use different measures. The HKU Libraries' own pages describe the institution as "Hong Kong's oldest academic library, with a collection of over two million volumes," while third-party consolidated sources (Wikipedia) give roughly 4 million volumes — a considerable gap, likely reflecting differences in whether electronic holdings are counted, and whether a given year's figure or a cumulative total is used. This article adopts "approximately 4 million volumes system-wide" as the more commonly cited order-of-magnitude reference, while placing the official "over two million volumes" statement alongside it for readers to use as they see fit; the precise figure should follow the official statistics for the relevant year. This kind of discrepancy — same institution, different sources, conflicting numbers — is common in collection statistics; rather than forcing a single figure, it is better to lay the difference out and note the basis for each.

JULAC and HKALL: weaving eight universities' collections into one network. HKU Libraries is no island. According to JULAC^※, the Joint University Librarians Advisory Committee (JULAC) was initiated as early as 1967 by the Heads of Universities Committee (HUCOM), serving as a standing forum for coordinating resources and services among the libraries of Hong Kong's University Grants Committee (UGC)-funded institutions; its members today are the eight UGC-funded universities — HKU, CUHK, HKUST, PolyU, CityU, HKBU, EdUHK and Lingnan. Under JULAC, the Hong Kong Academic Library Link (HKALL) is a union catalogue that lets staff and students of the eight universities search a combined monograph collection of more than 5 million titles, borrow across institutions and pick up items at their home library; eligible staff and research students can also use a "JULAC Library Card" to borrow directly from other universities' collections. For an HKU reader, this means "four million volumes" is only the starting point: through HKALL, a single HKU student can reach, in physical holdings, the sum of all eight UGC-funded university collections. This inter-library lending system, layered on top of HKU's own electronic resources and digital collections (see Section 8), constitutes a three-tier structure of "local holdings + networked borrowing + digital access."

HKU Libraries positions itself as serving "the University's vision in the three pillars of teaching, research and knowledge exchange"^※ — from the two rooms in 1912 that stocked books for the first cohort of students, to today's composite system spanning eight libraries, linking eight universities and opening special-collections conservation to the public, this growth line of the "oldest academic library" is, in a sense, a mirror image of HKU's own academic expansion.

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# 7. Special collections and the open-view conservation laboratory: beginnings in 1976, renewal in 2026

Beyond the four million volumes in everyday circulation, what truly cannot be replaced in HKU Libraries is its Special Collections — the unique copies, rare books, manuscripts and old Hong Kong imprints. They are also an indirect source for several of this site's historical investigations.

According to the official HKU Libraries "Special Collections" page^※, the Special Collections division is on the first floor of the Main Library's New Wing; it was established in 1976^※ as the system's core unit for materials on Hong Kong and South China, holding one of the largest collections of Hong Kong historical materials in the territory. It is organised into several clearly delineated sub-collections, corresponding to three strands: "old Hong Kong imprints," "Western rare books" and "institutional and personal archives."

# The Hong Kong Collection and the Hung On-To Memorial Library (1974)

At the heart of Special Collections is the Hong Kong Collection — per the official "Special Collections" page, this body of holdings is also known as the "Hung On-To Memorial Library", established in 1974^※, dedicated to the systematic collection of everything published about Hong Kong. The fine-grained detail of its holdings bears out its reputation as a research hub for Hong Kong studies: per the same source^※, it contains Hong Kong government reports dating from 1842, local publications deposited under the Book Registration Ordinance (Cap. 142), a dedicated Electoral Collection, and newspapers in microform and print. In other words, from the official documents of the colony's founding years to every legally registered Hong Kong publication of the present day, in principle it can all be found here — which makes it an indirect source for many of this site's investigations into HKU and Hong Kong history.

# Western rare books and manuscripts

The other great weight of Special Collections lies in Western-language antiquarian books. Per the official "Special Collections" page^※, its Western Rare Books range from 1588 to the pre-war period, deriving from the "Hankow Collection," the "Morrison Collection" and Sir Catchick Paul Chater, among other sources — the oldest Western-language rare book holdings in the HKU library system. Beyond rare books, Special Collections preserves a body of institutional and personal archives — per the same source^※, these include the "Palmer & Turner Architectural Collection," the photographic collection of Frank Fischbeck (FormAsia), the architectural archive of Luke Him-Sau, legal records of the firm Deacons, and photographer Basil Pao's stills from the film The Last Emperor, among others; there are also medieval manuscripts and a set of signed first editions. With such trade and personal archives as its backbone, Special Collections extends its reach from "books" to "the architectural, legal and photographic memory of modern Hong Kong."

Chinese-language rare books, for their part, reside mainly with the Fung Ping Shan Library: its Chinese rare book holdings exceed 700 titles in 14,000 volumes^※, including Song and Yuan imprints, Ming woodblock prints and Qing manuscripts — one of the largest Chinese rare book collections in Hong Kong (details in libraries-and-museums.md). That Chinese and Western rare books sit separately, in the Main Library and the Fung Ping Shan Building respectively, is itself a mirror of HKU's dual heritage as an English-style university with a Chinese academy at its core.

# The 2026 renewal and "open-view" conservation

The conditions in which these treasures are kept underwent a systematic upgrade in recent years. According to an official HKU announcement of February 2026^※, after roughly six months of renovation, the Special Collections area held its reopening ceremony at the Main Library on 10 February 2026; the upgraded facility meets international preservation standards, with comprehensively enhanced environmental controls, security and storage capacity — storage capacity has been expanded by about 59%, enough for roughly five years of new acquisitions — and new multi-purpose rooms for seminars and academic events. The renovation was completed in tandem with the overall renewal of the Main Library's ground floor, with support from the Hung On-To Memorial Fund, the Fung Ping Shan family, the WYNG Foundation and the Chan family, among others — a donor list that is almost a reprise, in one room, of the naming-and-benefaction tradition running through the branches described above.

Also unveiled on the same occasion was Hong Kong's first "Open-View Book & Paper Conservation Laboratory." Per the same announcement^※, it lets visitors watch conservators at work through glass, turning a process once hidden behind closed doors into a public educational spectacle, complemented by talks and workshops. The laboratory's daily business is precisely the long-term threat that Hong Kong's heat and humidity pose to paper: mould and insect damage. HKU Libraries' conservation team has been engaged in teaching, research and public outreach in regional archival conservation since 2010, and the open-view laboratory can be seen as a public-facing extension of that thread. The University Librarian summed up the significance of the work in a single line at the opening ceremony — "HKU not only preserves its own institutional history, but also bears the important responsibility of safeguarding social memory and protecting unique and precious cultural heritage."^※

Background note: From a quietly established Special Collections unit in 1976 to putting the conservation bench behind glass for public viewing in 2026, the library's posture toward its treasures has shifted subtly — from "locked deep away" to "displayed under controlled conditions." This echoes UMAG's public access arrangements (see libraries-and-museums.md) and forms an intriguing contrast with the registration requirement for certain books discussed at the end of this article: the same library, on the one hand pushing rare-book conservation into public view, on the other adding barriers to consulting part of its catalogue.

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# 8. The digital library: from ExamBase (1996) to the Scholars Hub

The "four million and first volume" at HKU Libraries is increasingly likely to be an electronic document with no physical form. Beyond physical holdings and inter-library lending, HKUL has built its own infrastructure for digital and open access.

Digital initiatives. According to HKU Libraries' official site^※, the library has used digitisation projects to put local holdings that existed only in print online; the first digitisation project, ExamBase, launched as early as 1996 — a date worth pausing on: in an era when most institutions had yet to grasp what "digital collections" meant, HKU Libraries was already converting local materials such as examination papers into searchable electronic form. More than forty projects have followed, now consolidated under a single portal, "DigitalRepository@HKUL."

These digitisation projects centre largely on Hong Kong and South China studies, and almost every one corresponds to a category of primary material that was once scattered and hard to find: the Basic Law Drafting History documents the drafting process of that constitutional instrument; the Hong Kong Image Database gathers historical photographs; the Cantonese Opera Clay Print Libretto rescues that endangered form of opera texts; the Hong Kong Historical GIS overlays old maps with geographic data; the Hong Kong Oral History Archives preserves the recorded memories of interviewees. There are also specialist databases on Hong Kong government reports, full-text Hong Kong journals, and documents of Hong Kong listed companies. For scholars of Hong Kong and South China history, this is an ever-expanding online storehouse that spares them the journey — it partially converts "travel to the Special Collections room to consult a unique copy" into "type a keyword into a search box."

The HKU Scholars Hub: opening up HKU's own research. If the digitisation projects bring outside material in, the HKU Scholars Hub does the opposite — it sends HKU's output out. According to the HKU Scholars Hub's official site^※, it is HKU's open-access institutional repository, responsible for collecting, preserving, displaying and disseminating the research output, awards and other achievements of HKU scholars; it is a key vehicle of the University's Knowledge Exchange strategy, aiming to raise the international visibility of HKU authors and their research and to foster academic collaboration. It is at once a public open-access platform and the University's internal research information system, maintaining a personal profile for each scholar, aggregating publications and impact data, and feeding into supporting services such as Research Data Services. Digital collections bring material in, the Scholars Hub sends research out — together they form the two digital wings of HKU Libraries beyond print, and they connect naturally with this site's articles on academic publishing and journals (see hku-press-and-flagship-works.md and academic-journals.md).

Taken together — four million physical volumes, the eight-university network reachable through HKALL, plus digitisation projects and an open-access repository — HKU Libraries is no longer a linear enlargement of those two rooms of 1912, but a composite knowledge network of "physical + networked + digital." Its boundaries lie both among the shelves of Pokfulam and at the far end of a search box.

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# 9. 2022: some "sensitive books" require registration

The openness of HKU Libraries has, in recent years, seen one publicly verifiable policy change. According to an exclusive 2022 report by the Hong Kong Free Press^※, HKU Libraries began requiring readers to register before consulting certain "politically sensitive" books; the report notes that these books had previously been freely borrowable, and that the new arrangement added a registration step. The change came against the backdrop of the altered social climate in Hong Kong following the implementation of the National Security Law (2020). The specific titles affected and the detailed procedures of the registration requirement have not been publicly itemised by the University; the report is presented as an exclusive, with limited corroboration from other outlets or the University itself. Reliability: single source; we report it faithfully as it stands, without further commentary. The change forms a contrast worth observing alongside the library's century-long positioning as an opener of special collections and a supporter of Hong Kong and South China studies (see the previous section); readers may judge the tension for themselves.

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# Unverified / to be checked

• Number of branch libraries (8) and current list: compiled here from the official "About HKUL" page and Wikipedia, including the Ko Wong Hui Wun Digital Art Library opened in 2024; if further branches are added, the HKUL official page prevails.
• Precise basis of total holdings figures: different sources differ on "Main Library vs system-wide" and "physical vs including electronic"; this article adopts "approximately 4 million volumes system-wide" as the rough figure; the combined monograph total reachable via HKALL (over 5 million titles) is counted separately.
• Special collections storage expansion and 2026 renewal details: the 59% expansion, roughly five years of added capacity and the 10 February 2026 opening follow the official HKU announcement; precise engineering figures await the Library's own published statistics.
• Details on the donors behind each branch's name: this article lists only the year of origin; for donor details see ../08-finances/benefactors-and-donors.md.

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