Purple Mountain Observatory, Nanjing, Jiangsu, PRC

The Institution Library

This shows a corner of the reading room of the library. The Observatory Library was established in 1935. At that time it had over 6,000 books and periodicals. Since that time, due to the efforts of the astronomers and librarians, the present collection has over 25,000 books and more than 30,000 bound volumes of periodicals, most of them being astronomical books and astronomical periodicals.

More than 200 different astronomical periodicals which are now published abroad can be found in the Observatory Library. The Library has complete sets of some titles such as Astrophysical Journal and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. In addition to the books and publications there are a lot of the Atlases of stars on film and in electronic format in the Library. For example, Palomar Observatory - European Southern Observatory Photographic Atlas of the Northern Sky, SERC - EJ (Equatorial J) Atlas on film, the Digitized Sky Survey on 101 CD-ROMs, to name but a few. The Library also has some books of ancient Chinese astronomy. As far as we know, the astronomical materials of the Library are the most comprehensive collection within China and so the Library has become a major center of astronomical materials.