On November 30, 2021, the National Library of China announced that it had put online a total of 100,000 items of various ancient resources through the "Chinese Ancient Books Database", including rare ancient books, ordinary ancient books, oracle bones, Dunhuang manuscripts, rubbings, Tangut materials, Zhao Cheng Jin Zang, local histories, genealogies, New Year posters, old photos, etc., as well as the ancient resources collected in the country and overseas. Readers can access and use these ancient resources without logging in.

Among these resources, the "Digital Ancient Books" database consists of full-color digital images and microfilm converted digital images, putting online rare and ordinary ancient book collections of the National Library of China. Since September 28th, 2016, the resources have been successively brought online. At present, there are more than 20,000 items of ancient resources in the database. The local history resources in the "Digital Chronicles" database are the country’s unique resources and also one of the characteristic collections of the National Library, of large amount and high qualities. The database is based on the local history collection of the National Library, and 6,528 items of local history resources are currently online.

Readers can log into the homepage of the National Library of China (http://www.nlc.cn/index.htm), click to enter the reader cloud portal, click the "Chinese Ancient Books Database" to enter the main search interface, or click the "Digital Ancient Books" and other sub-databases in the "Special Resources" section.

On the main page of the "Chinese Ancient Books Database", readers can use advanced search or cross search sub-databases, and they can also use the precise and combined search strategies by selecting title, author, call number and other fields. Clicking the title of search results, they can enter the page for full-text reading; clicking the specific volume, they can view the full-text images of the entire volume. Meanwhile, using various page reading tools, they can realize such functions as page switching and zooming.

(Information source: December 1, 2021, People's Daily Online)