Library System and Museum

This article belongs to Module 12 ("Miscellaneous") of the Unofficial History of HKU · an unofficial-history archive of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), and focuses on the University's library system (eight libraries, special collections, the Hong Kong Collection) and its art museum, UMAG. Information is current as of June 2026; collection figures, founding years and other data follow official primary sources, and where official accounts differ, the discrepancies are presented side by side.

HKU's knowledge infrastructure rests on two pillars: ① the HKU Libraries system and ② the University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG). This article is an overview of both, with institutional facts and key figures anchored to primary sources; for the full deep-dive on the origins of the eight libraries, JULAC/HKALL networking and digitisation projects, see hku-libraries-system.md, and for the architectural history of the Fung Ping Shan Building and its statutory monument status, see fung-ping-shan-library-museum.md. For the University Press, see hku-press-and-flagship-works.md; for campus and historic buildings, see ../05-campus/ (this article and Module 05 cross-reference each other on UMAG).

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# 1. The HKU Libraries System

# 1.1 At a glance

Note: The aggregate figures of roughly 4 million volumes and 24,000 journal titles come from third-party compiled sources (Wikipedia) and serve as leads only; the library's own annual statistics are authoritative. The system's founding date (October 1912) and the names of the branch libraries have been confirmed directly against the library's official website.

# 1.2 The eight branch libraries

According to the HKU Libraries "About HKUL" page^※, the library system comprises eight libraries:

1. Main Library
2. Dental Library
3. Fung Ping Shan Library — Chinese, Japanese and Korean-language holdings
4. Lui Che Woo Law Library
5. Music Library
6. Tin Ka Ping Education Library
7. Yu Chun Keung Medical Library
8. Ko Wong Wai Ching Wendy Fine Arts Digital Library

# 1.3 Fung Ping Shan Library

According to the library's official website^※, the Fung Ping Shan Library was established in 1932 as HKU's Chinese-language library, thanks to the generous donation of the philanthropist Mr. Fung Ping Shan. Construction of the building began in 1929, and it was officially opened by Sir William Peel on 14 December 1932^※. In 1961 its holdings moved into the Main Library building, and the original premises subsequently became the Fung Ping Shan Museum (the forerunner of today's UMAG — see below).

According to the Fung Ping Shan Library's collections page^※, the library primarily collects Chinese and Japanese books plus a small number of Korean titles. Its rare-book collection numbers over 700 titles in roughly 14,000 volumes, including 4 Song-dynasty editions, 18 Yuan-dynasty editions, as well as Ming-dynasty block-printed books and Qing-dynasty manuscripts.

# 1.4 Special Collections and the Hong Kong Collection

According to the library website and public sources, HKU Libraries' Special Collections hold Hong Kong materials, rare books, pamphlets and microforms. Within them, the Hong Kong Collection was established in 1971 and covers books, serials, government publications, newspaper clippings and non-print materials, documenting every facet of Hong Kong's history and society.

According to the EurekAlert press release^※ and the University's official press release^※, in February 2026 the Libraries announced the reopening of the refurbished Special Collections area after about six months of renovation, together with a new "Open-View Conservation Laboratory". The lab is "open by design": the public and visitors can watch conservators at work — repairing rare books and fragile documents — through glass partitions, turning what was once behind-the-scenes conservation into a public spectacle with an educational function. It is a concrete attempt by the Special Collections unit in recent years to balance preservation with public engagement. According to the University's release^※, the Special Collections unit itself was founded in 1976; the renovation has expanded storage capacity by roughly 59%, enough for about five years of new acquisitions at current rates. The building conservation of the Fung Ping Shan Building (the other historic home of Chinese rare books) and the Special Collections area, together with the architectural history of the Main Library itself (old wing 1961, new wing 1991), are covered in full in the companion articles hku-libraries-system.md and fung-ping-shan-library-museum.md.

# 1.5 The lending network: JULAC and HKALL

HKU Libraries is no island. According to JULAC's official site^※, the Joint University Librarians Advisory Committee (JULAC) was established as early as 1967 at the instigation of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, and serves as the standing forum for coordinating resources among the libraries of Hong Kong's eight University Grants Committee (UGC)-funded institutions (HKU, CUHK, HKUST, PolyU, CityU, HKBU, EdUHK and Lingnan). Under it, the Hong Kong Academic Library Link (HKALL) is a union catalogue that lets staff and students of all eight universities search a combined monograph collection of over 5 million titles and request cross-campus loans, collectable from whichever library is most convenient. For a HKU reader, "roughly 4 million volumes across the system" is just the starting point — through HKALL, a single HKU student can actually reach the combined holdings of all eight funded universities. HKU Libraries also runs its own digitisation projects (such as ExamBase, launched in 1996) and the open-access institutional repository HKU Scholars Hub, which brings digital collections and scholarly output into the system alongside print. The full anatomy of this three-tier structure — physical, networked and digital — can be found in Sections 6 and 8 of hku-libraries-system.md.

# 1.6 One public policy change: 2022, some books required registration

According to an exclusive 2022 report by Hong Kong Free Press^※, the University of Hong Kong required library users to register before accessing certain "politically sensitive" books; the report noted that these books had previously been freely borrowable. HKU has not publicly itemised the specific titles or the registration procedure, and the report was presented as an "exclusive" with limited corroboration. This site relays the facts as reported without extrapolating further; for relevant background see this site's ../18-wilder-movements/ module.

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# 2. The University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG)

# 2.1 Historical origins

According to the UMAG "History" page^※, the museum's lineage is as follows:

• 1932: The Fung Ping Shan Library is established as HKU's Chinese-language library (in honour of donor Mr. Fung Ping Shan).
• 1953: In the original Fung Ping Shan Library building, the Fung Ping Shan Museum is founded, dedicated to collecting Chinese art.
• 1994: The museum is renamed UMAG (University Museum and Art Gallery).
• 1996: The new wing, the T.T. Tsui Building, opens on 8 November 1996^※, connected to the original Fung Ping Shan Building by a bridge.

According to the Chinese Wikipedia entry^※, the donor Dr. T.T. Tsui (1941–2010) led a life of near-legendary trajectory: born in Ji'an, Jiangxi, he moved to Hong Kong with his parents at age nine; at thirteen, his family fell on hard times and his father died, forcing him to shoulder the family's livelihood — he worked as a restaurant kitchen hand, a bank messenger and a construction-site brick carrier. Over the following two decades he travelled the world amassing Chinese antiquities, eventually building a collection of nearly 5,000 pieces valued at hundreds of millions of US dollars, spanning ceramics (about 3,000 pieces), bronzes, jades, furniture and ivory-and-horn wares — earning him a reputation as "the only Chinese among the world's five greatest collectors." He subsequently donated artefacts or funds to museums in seven countries and regions, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in Britain, the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada and the National Gallery of Australia, each of which houses a "T.T. Tsui Gallery of Chinese Art" in his name; the T.T. Tsui Building at HKU's UMAG is the Hong Kong node of this global giving network. Dr. Tsui died in Beijing in April 2010.

# 2.2 "Hong Kong's oldest museum"

According to the UMAG website^※, UMAG is described as the oldest continuously operated museum in Hong Kong.

Caveat: this is UMAG's own official characterisation, and the operative phrase is "the oldest continuously operated," not simply "the first established." This site relays the qualifier exactly as the University phrases it and does not take the liberty of shortening it to "Hong Kong's first museum."

# 2.3 Collection highlights

According to the UMAG website^※, the collection spans:

• Ceramics: from the Neolithic period (c. 7000–2100 BCE) through the Qing dynasty (1644–1911);
• Bronzes: including Shang-dynasty (c. 1600–1100 BCE) and Western Zhou (c. 1100–771 BCE) ritual vessels;
• Nestorian crosses: UMAG holds the world's largest collection of Nestorian crosses from the Mongol (Yuan) period (1271–1368);
• Paintings: traditional and modern works from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) to the twenty-first century.

The museum sits at 90 Bonham Road, beside HKU's East Gate. Its location makes UMAG one of the few cultural facilities on campus that the public can visit without passing through a university gate: anyone can walk straight in off the street — no campus security check — to view over a thousand Chinese antiquities for free. In a Hong Kong cultural landscape where space is at a premium and most museums sit in the city centre, often with admission fees, that is a comparatively unusual degree of public openness, and one that chimes with the University's long-stated commitment to "serving society."

UMAG shares the very same historic building with the Fung Ping Shan Library, which gives the museum a peculiar double life: a former book repository turned treasure house. Visitors walk through galleries whose foundations once bore tens of thousands of Chinese classical texts, and now display bronze ritual vessels and Yuan-dynasty Nestorian crosses. That story — a change of function inside an unchanged shell — is itself a piece of material culture worth pausing over in HKU's century-long history. According to the English Wikipedia entry on UMAG^※, the collection holds over 1,080 pieces of Chinese art, including a Tang-dynasty three-legged water dropper with underglaze cobalt dots, described as one of the earliest known examples of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. The full architectural history of the Fung Ping Shan Building, the growth of the collection over three decades and the "butterfly plan" layout are examined in depth in fung-ping-shan-library-museum.md.

# 2.4 An episode from the war years: requisition during the Japanese occupation (1941–1945)

According to the UMAG official history page^※, after Hong Kong fell in late 1941, the Fung Ping Shan Building was requisitioned as a dormitory during the Japanese occupation, and the collections were taken over by the Japanese authorities. The official account records in particular that the occupation administration added confiscated private book collections to the existing holdings, thereby expanding them — a dark irony: a library built to preserve Chinese classics saw its shelves grow during the war, but only at the cost of wartime confiscations.

# 2.5 Statutory monument status (2018)

The Fung Ping Shan Building had already been graded a Grade II historic building in 1981; in 2018, the Antiquities Advisory Board voted unanimously^※ to recommend that it, together with two other early HKU dormitories — Eliot Hall and May Hall — be declared statutory monuments; the Secretary for Development subsequently declared the exteriors of the three buildings statutory monuments under the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance, gazetted on 16 November 2018^※. The three buildings received their statutory monument status on the same day, in the same batch — "three brothers." The grading history, architectural details and a complete milestone table are in Sections 2 and 6 of fung-ping-shan-library-museum.md.

# 2.6 Behind-the-scenes supporters: the University Museum Society, HKU (1988)

According to the Chinese Wikipedia entry^※, the University Museum Society, HKU was founded in 1988 as a non-profit organisation that has long supported UMAG's operations through fundraising, educational activities and acquisition of artefacts — one of the forces "behind the scenes" that has kept the collection expanding over six decades.

# 2.7 Recent developments: from STArts to The Little Prince

According to the UMAG official history page^※, in 2020 the museum launched the STArts project, exploring the intersection of science, technology and the arts through interdisciplinary research in art history, conservation and emerging technologies — a response to the question of how an old collection can converse with new technology. According to UMAG's event listings online^※, 2026 marks the eightieth anniversary of the French edition of The Little Prince, and UMAG is holding a special exhibition, The Little Prince and the Aviator, on the first floor of the T.T. Tsui Building from 26 June to 18 October 2026, with free admission, featuring photographs, letters, maps, manuscripts and first editions that present the many identities of the author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Such cross-disciplinary special exhibitions are one of the ways this 1932 building, now approaching its centenary, keeps drawing the public in.

# 2.8 Visitor information

According to the UMAG "Visit" page^※, the museum is at 90 Bonham Road; opening hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 9:30 am to 6:00 pm, and Sunday, 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm, closed on Mondays and public/University holidays; admission is free (some workshops or events are separately charged). The museum also stipulates: children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult; groups of more than 10 must apply in advance; photography is allowed only in the permanent galleries (except for special exhibitions); and no food, drink or smoking (including e-cigarettes) is permitted on the premises. This operating model — free admission, closed Mondays, limited hours — contrasts with that of the Main Library, which serves the University community all year round: UMAG behaves more like a civic museum for the general public than a purely in-house campus facility.

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# 3. Libraries and museum: an institutional comparison

Although HKU's two knowledge infrastructures share a single origin (both emerged from the Fung Ping Shan Building lineage), their institutional roles and audiences have long since diverged:

Source note: all figures in this section are cited in the corresponding paragraphs of the two preceding sections and of hku-libraries-system.md and fung-ping-shan-library-museum.md; this table is a horizontal summary only and does not re-attach citations.

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# 4. Further reading / cross-references

• Full institutional history of HKU Libraries (origins of the eight libraries, JULAC/HKALL, digitisation projects, Special Collections detail) → hku-libraries-system.md
• Architectural history of the Fung Ping Shan Building and its journey to statutory monument status (Leigh & Orange design, butterfly plan, wartime requisition, the museum's crown jewels) → fung-ping-shan-library-museum.md
• HKU Press → hku-press-and-flagship-works.md
• Academic journals published or edited by HKU → academic-journals.md
• Campus and historic buildings (including the Fung Ping Shan Building and the T.T. Tsui Building) → ../05-campus/
• Benefactors and named gifts (Fung Ping Shan, T.T. Tsui, Lui Che Woo, et al.) → ../08-finances/benefactors-and-donors.md
• Social background to the 2022 library policy change → ../18-wilder-movements/welcome.md

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