The new building to house China's National Library opened Tuesday. The new building has enough floor space to make the library the world's third largest in terms of area. The 250,000 square metres at the National Library in Beijing are surpassed only by national libraries in France and the United States.

The new building has enough floor space to make the library the world's third largest in terms of area.

The new structure in west central Beijing is the second phase of library construction. It has storage rooms, displays of ancient books, reading rooms and a digital library. Phase 2 alone encompasses 80 thousand square metres.

There are 29-hundred seats. The library is equipped to serve about 8,000 readers daily with about 600,000 books. Readers also have wireless access to the Internet on their laptops. They may also use any of the 460 computers in the new building. Palmtop digital book readers are also available, providing access to 200-terabytes of digital resources. A special library section for vision-disabled people features voice-recognition computers which can search for books and resources.

The 250,000 square metres at the National Library in Beijing are surpassed only by national libraries in France and the  United States.

There also are plans for a library channel in collaboration with a cable television service. The channel will replay library lectures and show exhibitions, as well as provide basic information about the library's operation.

Wang Ligeng, director of Digital Resources Dept. National Library, said, "Wherever our readers are, in Beijing, Shanghai, Tibet or in the countryside, when they log onto the Internet, they can make application to be a user on our system. It's the same as applying for a free email box. Our digital resources will all be available on the Internet. So readers will have access whether they are here in the library or elsewhere."

Construction of the new building began in late 2004 at a cost of 1.22 billion yuan. It is among the key culture projects under the sponsorship of the Chinese government.