On November 30, 2021, the Shanghai Library released a picture of the interior of its East Building to the public for the first time. In the picture, sunlight pours through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, which makes people look forward to reading here in the future. There is a special floor design in the lobby, inspired by the lines of words on the newspaper, and there are also punctuation marks if you look closely.
With a floor space of about 115,000 square meters, the Shanghai Library East Building is China’s largest single library building, with 7 floors above ground and 2 floors underground. It can provide nearly 6,000 seats, and satisfy people’s cultural needs with more than 200 lectures and thousands of cultural events each year. It can also receive 4 million readers each year.
This building will be a cultural space focusing on reading, with more than 20 theme libraries and functional areas. On the first floor, there is a Children's Area and a Barrier-free Reading Room for the disabled, as well as gift shops and a café. On the second floor, there is a newspaper & periodical reading area and a reading area designed for senior citizens. On the third floor, the open Reading Square integrates such functions as book collection, book loan, and reading. Meanwhile, there are small discussion rooms, study rooms, and the Innovative Reading Area. Based on the ideas of “reading people, cities and the world”, and “reading literature, art and technology”, several theme libraries are constructed, including local archives, genealogies, manuscripts of cultural celebrities, global cities, law and music, performance, art, design, cutting-edge technology, and healthy lifestyle. On the seventh floor, the exhibition area will typically exhibit the library treasured collections. The over 2,000-square-meter Urban Living Room is for nationwide reading promotion, opening to all the reading groups in Shanghai. The two libraries within the library, including the Shanghai Federation of Social Science Associations International Academic Center and Shanghai Centre of Local History, are located on the sixth and fourth floor respectively. They will focus on building an information intelligent platform, developing collaborative innovation, and forming resource aggregation and pervasion effects to assist in the construction of urban think tanks.
On November 30, 2021, the Shanghai Library also began to solicit "Reading Messages" from the general public, and we are looking forward to hearing the voices of readers and knowing their experiences, understandings, and expectations for reading. The period for the collection of "Reading Messages" is from December 1 to 31, 2021. We ask mainly for original messages of about 10 words, written on A3- or A4-size paper with a brush or a signature pen, and please take photos (or videos) of the written messages and then upload them to the specific website of the Shanghai Library for the "Reading Messages" event.
(Information source: December 7, 2021, Liberation Daily, reported by Shi Chenlu)