American
Studies Center

Peking University

View some pictures

The home of the ASC

The American Studies Center occupies half of the entire fifth floor of the new library at the heart of Peking University. Most of this space is reserved for the Center's collection of books about the U.S. and Sino-American Relations. The entire collection is available for browsing in open stacks and anyone with a library card may check out monographs. Thanks to large donations in 1998 and 1999, the core collection is up-to-date and more than doubled in size. It now totals approximately 10,000 volumes and continues its rapid growth. About one-third of the collection is composed of reference works; the remainder are scholarly monographs broadly representing the social sciences, humanities, history, literature and arts. The Center is also a repository for more than 70 bound, back-issues of U.S. periodicals.

The ASC's brightly-lit new home in the library also includes study and seminar tables as well as meeting facilities . There are three, well-furnished offices carrels with telephones and networked personal computers for faculty and staff. There are currently six Compaq computers available, and another 20 will have been added by the end of 2002. These computers are on the campus network and hence feature fast connections to the Internet.

The ASC collection and its reading rooms are open to all Peking University faculty and students and their guests. A part-time reference librarian as well as two full-time clerical staff (shared with the Taiwan Documents Center) are present to maintain the collection and help users with their needs.