From March to May 2022, the number of Shanghai Library online readers was doubled. The number of visits to the professional service portal (z.library.sh.cn) of the Shanghai Library increased from 3.31 million in the same period last year to 6.7 million.

Since the temporary closing of the library on March 10, 2022 due to the epidemic, the Shanghai Library has been actively carrying out various online activities, and at the same time opening remote access to more academic resources. In the past, due to copyright restrictions, the use of a considerable part of the database resources in the Shanghai Library required readers to be in the library. During the epidemic this year, the Shanghai Library contacted major database suppliers to discuss the granting of remote access to the databases and increasing the ways of remote access to the main sites of the commonly used databases. The foreign language databases are providing an additional professional access method, which has helped to increasing the number and methods of the remote use of these databases, as well as allowing more convenient access. Altogether 30 additional trial databases have been provided. With a Shanghai Library reader card, readers can use these databases for free.

According to statistics, from the perspective of usage alone, the most used databases in the Shanghai Library are Chinese general databases, such as Duxiu, Wanfang, VIP, etc. However, the Shanghai Library readers generally do not search only one database. They often start with one general database and then continue on to other subject databases, sometimes up to four or five databases.