On July 13, 2025, a 28-member delegation led by Mr. Gu Jinming, President of the Hong Kong Library Association (HKLA), visited the Shanghai Library East. The visit aimed to gain an in-depth understanding of the Shanghai Library’s management expertise in areas such as cultural resource management, collection development, and service innovation, with the hope of exploring future collaboration opportunities through discussions. Xu Qiang, Deputy Director of the Shanghai Library, extended a warm welcome to President Gu and his delegation. A brief exchange was held in Meeting Room 1 on the 7th floor, where Deputy Director Xu introduced the library’s history, its collections and facilities, the smart services and circulation statistics of the Library East, themed libraries and reading promotion initiatives, as well as collaborations between the Bibliotheca Zi-Ka-Wei and the Vatican Library, and the Marco Polo exhibition.
President Gu, on behalf of HKLA, expressed thanks for the Shanghai Library’s meticulous arrangements. Established in 1958, HKLA organizes annual study tours for its members to libraries in the country. Comparing this visit to the one made twenty years ago to the Shanghai Library on Huaihai Road, President Gu remarked that the Library East left him even more impressed and he looked forward to strengthened cooperation between the two institutions. Accompanied by Deputy Director Xu, the delegation toured key areas of the Library East, including the robotic demonstrations in the atrium on the 1st floor, the 3rd smart shelves and Reading Plaza, the 4th floor Genealogy Library and Manuscript Library, the 5th floor Art Library and Music Library, and the 7th floor Treasured Collections Library.
