Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library

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The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library is housed in the Lee Shau Kee Library, located at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. It has over 1 million books, ~730,000 in print and ~350,000 in electronic format, as well as tens of thousands of e-journals, and streaming audio and video collections. A good part of its Special Collections, like its Antique Maps of China Collection has been digitized.

Opening its doors in 1991, the then Governor of Hong Kong, David Wilson, Baron Wilson of Tillyorn, was impressed by the fact that the Library had an advanced bilingual Chinese and English online catalog. The Library continued to be a pioneer in library and information services, rolling out the first large-scale campus-wide CD-ROM network in Asian academic libraries; and in 1993 an early Course Reserve Image system. In 1995, its CD-ROM juke-box was the largest such installation outside of the USA and it also had launched the first academic Library Web Server in Hong Kong in 1995 as well. In its first 10 years, it became a mirror site for some subscription databases, and implemented wide-scale XML-based database projects and other innovations.

Joining the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Research Coalition (SPARC) in 1999 it has also been a long-time promoter of open access. It launched the first Institutional Repository in Hong Kong in 2003 and members of the library's Reference team worked to promote it among faculty members

From 2011 through 2012 the Library built an extension of 1,800 square meters and renovated an existing 1,800 sq.m. into a Learning Commons. The HKUST Learning Commons provides ~600 seats and has 5 zones: Group Study, Open Study, Refreshment, Teaching, and The Creative Media Zone.

The Library and its staff were very active in supporting The University in the University Grants Committee (Hong Kong)'s Hong Kong Research Assessment Exercise of 2014