Cycling is ingeniously integrated with campus culture. As the wheels roll forward, international freshmen get to understand Tsinghua’s history and experience campus life. As a core check-in site spot on this cycling route, Tsinghua University Library has delivered an immersive academic experience for international freshmen with attentive international services.
Event Recap
Since March 5, 2026, the "Fresh Start Campus Cycling Activity", jointly organized by the Graduate Union of Tsinghua University, the International Student and Scholar Center, and Tsinghua University Library, has officially kicked off. Every Thursday afternoon throughout March, international freshmen from all over the world visited the West Library, North Library and Old Library in groups. Through expert English-language tours led by librarians, the students immersed themselves in the library's academic atmosphere and quickly familiarized themselves with its core resources and services.
The event adopted a small-scale, immersive format with tours conducted entirely in English. The West Library and North Library tours were led by subject librarians from the Information and Reference Department, while the Old Library tour was conducted by librarians from the Ancient Books and Special Collections Department. Altogether, the three sessions served more than sixty new international students.
West library（Yifu Library）
Collection layout and Supporting Facilities
Librarians led the freshmen from the West Library to the North Library, introducing the spatial layout and collection distribution across different floors. This helped the students gain a clear understanding of the library’s functional zones.
Introducing the Layout of the West Library Collection
The second floor of the West Library houses the Science and Technology Collection, offering a comprehensive range of professional STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) books in both Chinese and English. The third floor features the Music Library, seamlessly blending knowledge with melody to add an artistic touch to academic life. The fourth floor contains the Congyou Space, an excellent venue for the collision of ideas and exchange of inspiration, and its electronic training classroom offers various credit courses and practical workshops that comprehensively help students improve their abilities.
The North Library centers its collections on Chinese humanities and social science books, adopting a floor-by-floor open-stack system. Its first floor includes exhibition areas and self-service facilities. The second floor is equipped with group study rooms, and the third floor provides individual study rooms for focused, independent work. Additionally, there is an ancient books reading room for studying precious historical documents.
Essential Library Services
During the visit, librarians explained and demonstrated various basic library services on site, enabling international freshmen to master these skills more quickly. The demonstrations covered the entire process of book reservation, renewal and return, convenient access to electronic resources, as well as practical operations such as seat reservation, self-service printing and self-checkout machines. They also recommended inter-library loan, research consultation and information on various courses and lectures to the students, hoping to help them make full use of the library’s abundant resources and services.
Explaining how to reserve a seat
Demonstrating how to use the self-service kiosks
A century of accumulated cultural heritage at the library
The Old Library, which carrying a century of memories of Tsinghua University Library, served as the final stop of the tour. Guided by librarians from department of rare and distinctive collections, the freshmen visited the stacks, general reading rooms, and Tsinghua Collection Reading Room of the Old Library, learning about its century-long development. The antique and elegant architectural style, precious ancient books, and distinctive special collections allowed everyone to experience the unique cultural charm of Tsinghua Library up close.
Introducing the history of the Old Library
Guided tour of the stacks of the Old Library
The "Fresh Start Campus Cycling Activity" has come to a successful conclusion. The activity not only helped international freshmen fully unlock library resources and quickly adapt to campus academic life, but also deepened their understanding of the Tsinghua spirit and campus culture.
The Library proactively aligns with Tsinghua University’s 2030 Global Strategy and actively implements its international services. To date, the Library’s major service systems, including its homepage, Shuimu Search (Discover@THU), resource navigation, and Tsinghua Scholars Database (THU Scholar) have been made bilingual. The Library now provides regular bilingual services for international students, continuously improving the precision and convenience of its international services.
In the future, Tsinghua University Library will continue to enhance its international service capabilities. It will support international students in their growth with professional resources and services, assist international scholars in making better use of academic resources, and contribute to the successful implementation of Tsinghua University’s 2030 Global Strategy.
Group photo of librarians and visiting students
