The library has three branches in Hangzhou: the newly built library on Shuguang Road, a branch library on Solitary Road for the collection of ancient Chinese books, and another branch library on College Road. It also has an additional branch in Nanxun in Huzhou City. The central library is a newly built library that covers an area of 30,800 square meters equipped with state of the art amenities. There are 22 service desks open to the public, serving the readers throughout the province.
The library has a collection of more than 4 million books, among which 835,000 are ancient Chinese books, and over 300,000 are books in foreign languages. Many come to the periodical section since it has over 20,000 foreign newspaper and journals. The library has experienced a growth in literature recordings, films, discs, and other audio-video educational material.
The most precious collection is of course "The Complete Library of Four Branches of Books" housed in Wenlan Ge Library. The books are sutra texts copied by Tang Dynasty scholars. It contains volumes of block-printed editions and copied editions of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and the block-printed editions from Japan, Korea and Vietnam.
Since 1978, it has established cooperation with libraries in other countries like U.S. and Japan for exchange of books, newspapers and journals. Currently, the library is carrying out the digital library project, which intends to ease accessibility of exchange and loans.
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