Achievements

HKUST Library was instrumental in bringing INNOPAC out of the USA and in providing expert knowledge to assist them in enhancing the system to support Chinese characters.

We also served as the only beta site for debugging and product testing. Since then, all academic libraries in Hong Kong and many others in Asia  adopted INNOPAC.

To enrich the cultural life on campus, the Library organized the first art exhibition featuring art works of prominent artists Huang Miaozi (黃苗子) and Yu Feng (郁風). In the Library’s first decade, over 20 art exhibitions were held in the Library Gallery. These exhibitions represented various media and art forms including Chinese calligraphy and painting, watercolor painting, sculpture, oil, collage, photography, print, rubbing, and seal carving.

Through the years, the Library has introduced many new technologies to the Hong Kong Library Community. In 1993, the Library worked closely with a US-based system vendor to develop an innovative “Image Management System”. This system scanned faculty’s handwritten notes, images, assigned reading materials, etc; and provided sophisticated searching capabilities. It was the first of its kind.

The Library installed Compact Shelving on LG4 – a safe, elegant and user-accessible electronically operated mobile shelving system that was the first and the largest of its kind in Hong Kong.

In 1998, similar compact shelving systems were installed to hold the growing collection of microfiche and microfilm and for the University Archives.

When the web technology was first unveiled, HKUST Library responded enthusiastically by developing its website immediately. This server allows users seamless access to library information and collections and provides a gateway to electronic resources worldwide.

• May 1995: 18,180
• May 2001: 1,217,336

Functioning as the institutional memory, the University Archives was formally opened to the University community.

The Special Collections, under development since 1991, include Landmarks in Science and Technology, Antique Maps of China and other valuable items which became available for researchers for the first time.

The Library undertook the responsibility of providing efficient access and retrieval capabilities for a large number of premier full text databases via Ovid to Hong Kong libraries, including most UGC libraries, along with the Hospital Authority, Vocational Training Council, and some private companies.

As international network connections improved, the need for this service was reduced, and our access migrated from the mirror site to a direct connection to the United States in 2000.

The Digital Archives, Electronic Theses,  and the HKUST News Clippings were the first digital libraries developed in-house. They provide sophisticated searching and instantaneous full text display.

Digital Archives allows users to search and retrieve University documents and publications online; Electronic Theses contains dissertations of our graduate students; and HKUST News Clippings included University-related full text news online.

HKUST Library partnered with Nanjing University in the production of the first electronic Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index Database (中文社會科學引文索引). China’s Ministry of Education in 1999 named this project as one of the most significant projects.

It initially covered 496 Chinese language periodicals with over 280,000 citations in the humanities and social sciences published in the mainland, and will grow to include another 100-150 periodicals published in Hong Kong and other countries.

The Library has close exchanges with many libraries in the mainland. In recognizing her contributions, our University Librarian was conferred Guest Professorship (客座教授) by Peking University (北京大學) in 2000, Nanjing University (南京大學) in 1999, and Jilin University (吉林大學) in 2001. She was appointed Library Advisor in 1996 by Tsinghua University (清華大學).