Jinling Library, municipal public library of Nanjing, is founded on 9th June,1927. It was renamed as Municipal First Library of Nanjing in July, 1928 and as Nanjing Municipal Library in September, 1933. After the Japanese army invaded into Nanjing on 13th December, 1937, most of the books were burnt out including those valuable ones of historical significance.

Even in Three Years of Natural Disasters and Cultural Revolution, the library still delivered services in temporary places, sending books to the grass roots, to the countryside and to the fields. In October 1980, the new building located in No.262 Changjiang Road was opened, covering an area of 7,300 square meters. Its initial name was People's Library of Nanjing, and changed to the present name （Jinling Library）in October 1984. The new building in No.158 Leshan Road, Jianye District, constructed in 2005 and delivered in 2009. The opening ceremony was held on 18th October, 2010, and the site covers an area of 38,641 square meters, with a total construction area of 25,165 square meters, equipped with 1400 reading seats inside, and a lecture hall, a multi-function hall, an exhibition hall, an audio-visual room, a training hall, restaurants, tea rooms, parking lots and other ancillary services.

In 2009, as a municipal library of a sub-provincial city, Jinling Library was evaluated as the First Class Library by the National Ministry of Culture. JL Forum has held public knowledge lectures to the citizens diligently and constantly, expanding extended service of the library, for which won the Galaxy Award by the National Ministry of Culture in 2010, the highest governmental award in field of cultural services. Later in June 2010, Jinling Library was awarded the “National Key Protection Unites of Ancient Books” of the third batch.

Jinling Library stands out by its unique architectural appearance, profound cultural foundation, exquisite reading environment, advanced facilities and people-oriented service idea, dedicated to providing services for various readers as books lending, reference service, information retrieval, conference exhibition, lectures and training and all kinds of reading activities.

Apart from domestic services, we have unceasingly expanded service network outside the library based on measures like building branches in cooperation with grass-root communities and carrying out lending services in cars, in a way of active promotion to construction of public service system like free inter-library of book borrowing and lending and joint building and sharing of resources.

In addition to good services of traditional documents, Jinling Library has been steadily committed to the expansion of network information service function, by strengthening website construction, digital resources construction and information system construction as well as conducting various kinds of online information services including knowledge navigation, subject retrieval, reading guidance, consultation and document delivery, making it possible for more users to have access to convenient and efficient knowledge and information delivery.

Jinling Library plays a role of cultural oasis and public class for citizens to enjoy services of public literature and information resources, healthy and leisure reading and conducting knowledge exploration and life-long education. We are looking forward to your visit.