Nowadays, NLC covers a floor area of 250,000 square meters. It is the third largest national library in the world, next only to the Library of Congress in Washington DC and the Moscow National Library in Russia. NLC's collection ranks fifth in the world. Among others, NLC collects all of the published books within China. By 2008, NLC?s overall collection totaled 26.31 million volumes and artifacts.

Its rare pieces include the Oracle Bones (inscriptions on animal bones and tortoise shells from the Shang Dynasty) and four specialized collections, namely, Dunhuang Manuscripts, Zhaocheng Tripitaka of the Jin Dynasty, Yongle Encyclopedia and Complete Library of the Four Branches of Literature.

Dunhuang Manuscripts was discovered in the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang and includes ancient editions of Chinese classics and Buddhism sutras. Zhaocheng Tripitaka of the Jin Dynasty was printed in the Jin Dynasty (1115-1234). The Buddhist canon is comprised of 6,980 volumes of text, using 168,000 woodblocks. Yongle Encyclopedia is a Chinese compilation commissioned by Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) Emperor Yongle in 1403 and completed in 1408. It was then the world?s largest known general encyclopedia and one of the earliest. Complete Library of the Four Branches of Literature was compiled between 1773 and 1782, it is a collection and annotation of over 10,000 manuscripts from the imperial collections and other libraries. The Complete Library was bound into 36,381 volumes with more than 79,000 chapters, comprising about 2.3 million pages and approximately 800 million Chinese characters. Today NLC is open to those over 16 years of age, enabling broad access to all of the ancient and modern collections. The library is also far more than a place to borrow and return books.

The National Library of China (NLC) is celebrating its 100th birthday on September 9.

"The first function of NLC is to pass on the culture of the Chinese nation," said Zhan Furui, the fifth library curator of NLC. "Meanwhile, NLC takes the responsibility of offering document consulting services for the top leaders to facilitate their decision making. Of course, NLC also contributes to teaching and scientific research. Last but not the least, NLC serves ordinary readers."?

NLC initiated the Wenjin Book Award in 2004. The award honors 10 types of books (vacancy allowed) and also recommends 30 titles to the public every year in the fields of philosophy, social science and natural science. Up until now, the award has honored 39 from over 2,000 books entered in the competition. Among the entries, 117 have been recommended.

NLC also holds numerous lectures for the public, such as its Wenjin Lecture Series and the Wenjin Reading Salon. It also presents diverse and large-scale exhibitions of library treasures and collections.