The library of the Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMR, CAS) was founded in 1953. It has become a small and medium scale sized material-specialized library with abundant collections and distinct academic characteristics.
The library covers an area of 2500㎡ containing the libraries of north and south campus. The north campus library is specialized in the field of materials science and engineering, metallography and technology. The south campus library is specialized in the field of metal corrosion and protection.
The library has a collection of more than 40000 volumes of documents, 1728 different kinds of foreign periodicals and 1276 kinds of Chinese periodicals, as well as reference books, handbooks, standards, academic dissertations.
Recent years, the library has brought in 10 net resources home and abroad including full text in Chinese and foreign periodicals, conference paper, dissertation, patent, standards, numeric database, abstract database and Defense Science and Technology Information System. The library has access to more than 70 net databases. It also has coverage of over 98% in professional literature. Due to years of efforts, the library of IMR has grown into a systematic and complete literature and information base for material science.