• 2009-02-23

The National Central Library (NCL) inaugurated its Arts and Audiovisual Center on October 27, 2008, at a ceremony presided by Minister of Education Cheng Jei-cheng. Since moving to Zhongshan South Road in 1986, the NCL has faced a growing need for space as its collection swells. To address this need, former library director-general Juang Fang-rung worked tireless to secure the Shih Chien Hall for the library's expansion. The new center is housed in the hall, situated about 900 meters from the main library, enabling close mutual service support between the two locations. The 2,277-square meter center was established with funding from the Ministry of Education (MOE) and has a holding capacity for about 250,000 volumes (items), or enough to accommodate six-year's of future collection growth at the NCL. The center is a special library serving both cultural and research functions. Book lending, reference support, copying and other services are provided at the center, with a focus on art and audio-visual (AV) materials. The center has 40 seats, 17 computer terminals, and 50 media consoles for readers. The center is divided into a general books reading area, stack area, AV viewing area, administrative area and public service area. The center collection includes art books and periodicals and AV/multimedia resources. In the former are more than 90,000 books and about 40 periodicals on Chinese and western art. The center's AV/multimedia collection currently encompasses over 80,000 resources in Chinese and western languages. About 35,000 items, including art and music books, periodicals, e-books and popular AV recordings are available in the open stack areas and can be freely accessed by readers. Readers can also access materials in the closed stack area by filling out a request form. The information retrieval service is networked with various automation systems, databases and video-on-demand (VOD) resources at the main library, enabling readers to search for various types of bibliographic, full-text and digital resources. (Chinese text by Huang Ching-hua)