Wuhan University Library has stored over 200,000 thread-bound volumes of ancient Chinese books and above 800 tiltes of 14,000 items are rare books, 300 of which are included in The Catalogue of Ancient Chinese Rare Books, 64 of which are included in List of National Precious Ancient Books. At the same time, the collections of about 1,600 kinds of local chronicles and 400 kinds of genealogy books are distinctive ancient books. Wuhan University Library was designated as an important conservation library of ancient books by the State Council for the quantity and quality of its ancient books in 2009.

Ancient Books Sector, located in D3 area, covers a total area of 1,400 square meters, and consists of book rooms, reading rooms, cataloguing rooms, recovering rooms and arrangement rooms. Stack rooms cover 960 square meters (192 for the rare, 768 for the ordinary). Newly-built ancient book rooms are taken with modern protective measures to be accommodated with thermostat, humidistat and air filter, automatic fire alarm and thermal insulation. The orderly bookshelves are made of complete camphorwood which is fairly ideal for ancient books. The recovering rooms are also equipped with pulp filling machine, cold light table, ultrasonic cleaning, and other equipment. These modern equipment are arranged in good order in the recovering rooms of the General Library. Combined with the fix master’s manual operation, they make those stubbornly diseased books recovery, whether rat gnawed or worm-eaten, molded or waterlogged to get recovered.

The reading rooms of ancient books are specially arranged for ancient books readers. They are open to readers during workdays with closed stacks, except legal holidays. The reading rooms, where the reading area is separated from the service area by antique shelves, with distinctive layout, pieces of calligraphy and painting on the white walls, artifacts and antiques on antique shelves, which reflect the remained flavor of the traditional academy, are very ideal for the numerous outstanding scholars ,experts and students to devote themselves to their study and enlightenment. As the old saying goes: to learn from the past is to serve the present, and we should give first priority to pragmaticality to concern for world affairs; Concern goes before happiness and maintain good intentions since the young scholarly period!