The Library consists of the South and North Section with a total area of approximately 10,000 square meters, containing 700 seats in its reading rooms. It has a collection of about 800,000 books, 1,000 periodicals and 4,000 kinds of audio-visual materials in 31 foreign languages including English, Russian, German, Spanish, Japanese and Arabic, etc. Its collection is mainly on linguistics, literature and cultural studies, but with the development of the university's reform in education these years, the collection on history, diplomacy and economics has been growing, too.

  At present, the Library is made up of 8 departments: Acquisition, Cataloguing, Books-in-Chinese Circulation, Books-in-Foreign Languages Circulation, Periodicals, Automatic-control Technology, Humanity Resources Center Office and the Library Office. There are also some centers in the library, such as "Humanity Resources Center of the Ministry of Education", "Foreign Language Teaching Resources Center of North China", "Australian Studies Resources Center", "English Studies Resources Center", "American Studies Resources Center" and "Malaysian Studies Center".

  Now there are 48 librarians working here, among whom 8 are research fellows and 24 are librarians. The Director of Library is Professor Guo Qiqing. The South Section (New Library Building) which opened to public in 1991 has changed the traditional mode of management in storage and offers an extensive, open-stack service.

  In 1994, the Library network began to work, computerizing cataloguing, Chinese and foreign languages material circulation, collection management and bibliographical retrieval services. Our users can obtain what they need quickly through CD-ROM, they also have access to computers and photocopying.

  To provide better information services, the Library has established close inter-library relations with other libraries, including the National Library, the University Library of Beijing University, the University Library of Beijing Normal University.

  The Library serves not only the users from Beijing Foreign Studies University, but also graduate students, teachers and researchers from all over China -- more than 300 annually. Our English Studies Resources Center, one of the five British Council libraries in China, is open to the whole society and has at present about 1,000 regular users. On the average, the Library receives 200,000 users from inside and outside the university every year.

  With the implementation of the 211 Project and the establishment of the campus net, our information service will develop further. Our library will work harder to make greater contributions to the teaching and research of BFSU and the whole country in general.