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The Run Run Shaw Library and the Indra and Harry Banga Gallery

Miscellany ~15,635 characters · 33 min read Updated
ScopeUniversity-wideEra2020sGenreInstitutionalGenreDataThemeLibraryThemeHeritage exhibition

On the CityU campus, knowledge and art each claim their own high ground: one library holding more than three million volumes, one gallery on the top floor of an academic building. This article traces the history of the University's central library, the Run Run Shaw Library — its development, the scale of its collections, its learning commons, special collections and law holdings — as well as the naming, positioning and exhibition history of the University's heritage exhibition space, the Indra and Harry Banga Gallery. For the design and naming stories of the two buildings themselves, see 05-campus/buildings-landmarks.md (Yeung Kin Man Academic Building and Lau Ming Wai Academic Building).

Collection figures change from year to year. What is recorded here follows verifiable public data, with the basis and year of each figure noted.

The Run Run Shaw Library

1.1 As old as the University: history and naming

The CityU Library was established in 1984, the same year as the institution that became City University — then the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong. From a modest polytechnic book collection to today's full-scale academic library, its growth is almost a miniature of the University's own passage from polytechnic to research university. In 1989 it moved with the University to its present home on Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong; in 1990, following a major donation from the film mogul and philanthropist Sir Run Run Shaw, the library was named in his honour. Shaw was a celebrated Hong Kong film producer and philanthropist, widely known for the Shaw Prize that bears his name and for his gifts to educational and medical institutions across mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan (most bearing the "Shaw" name). The library is one of several "Run Run Shaw"–named buildings on the CityU campus, another being the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre. Naming both the main library and the Creative Media Centre after him was a tribute to his generosity — and a way of weaving "Run Run Shaw" into the memory of the campus. (For the fuller donor story behind such namings, see 08-finances/benefactors-and-donors.md.)

1.2 Location and layout

The Run Run Shaw Library occupies the 2nd and 3rd floors of the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building (AC1). The interior is divided into colour-coded zones (a Red Zone, a Purple Zone and others) to help readers navigate the different collections and functional areas.

1.3 The collections

According to publicly aggregated figures, the Run Run Shaw Library holds roughly 3.25 million volumes and items, broken down approximately as follows:

Collection type Approximate quantity
Print books 1,038,800 volumes
E-books 2,220,600 volumes
Bound journal volumes 178,800 volumes
Current journal titles 965 titles

Note: the table follows publicly aggregated figures. E-books already far outnumber print volumes, reflecting a collection built around digital holdings; the precise numbers change year by year, and the library's official annual statistics are authoritative. The library provides about 2,700 seats and records annual circulation of roughly 351,032 transactions. More than three million volumes is considerable for a university of medium size whose history spans barely four decades. Beyond print, the library also offers extensive electronic resources and databases (see its research guides) — and for a university as internationalised and research-intensive as CityU, access to electronic literature often matters more than the size of the print collection.

1.4 Learning Commons: from book storehouse to learning space

A modern university library is no longer merely a place to store and borrow books; it is a "learning space" where students work collaboratively and make use of technology. The Run Run Shaw Library's Learning Commons embodies exactly this shift, and its signature facility is The Oval. According to the library's website, The Oval is designed to provide students with advanced computer equipment and IT support for collaborative learning and research; its configuration includes 136 computer workstations and a wide range of software — word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, desktop publishing, web authoring, and statistical analysis and programming languages.

The phrase "statistical analysis and programming languages" is telling. It matches CityU's computational, data-centred character (see 01-academics/college-of-computing-2024.md): here, library computers are not just for looking things up, but workbenches for running code and crunching analysis. The library also offers group study rooms and study carrels, with roughly 125 individual study seats, bookable in advance through the University's central reservation system, Resource Booker (library website). Between the 125 individual study seats, the group study rooms and The Oval, the library covers the whole spectrum from solo concentration to team collaboration — a genuine "second classroom" for CityU students.

1.5 Expansion and international recognition

A new wing was added to the library in 2013, providing around 125 additional individual study spaces as well as a rare-book collection and stack facilities. The library has also won recognition among international peers: according to public records, it received ALA Presidential Citations from the American Library Association in 2021 (honouring projects including Lighthouse Heritage Research Connections), and in 2022 the ALA's "Chairman's Award for International Library Innovation".

1.6 Special Collections & Archives

The Run Run Shaw Library maintains Special Collections & Archives, holding rare materials of many kinds — books, posters, manuscripts, photographs, title deeds, ephemera — some of which have also been digitised (Digital Special Collections). Verifiable holdings include:

  • General Rare Materials Collection: more than 3,000 volumes, including an "Architect's Collection" and rare books published before 1900, now stored at Shatin Storage and retrievable by request at the circulation counter.
  • Law special collections: within the law holdings, the library maintains an English Law Special Collection and a Chinese Legal History Special Collection. The latter is housed in the library's Purple Zone and is open to CityU staff and students, holders of recognised library credentials, and local and overseas scholars alike.

1.7 Law library / law holdings

The law holdings serving the School of Law are not a separate library building; they form a dedicated law collection and services area within the Run Run Shaw Library — the Law Collection and Services Section is set within the library on the 3rd floor of the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building, with the law collection concentrated in the Purple Zone. So what people call the "CityU Law Library" is in fact a law special collection inside the central library, not a geographically separate branch.

2.1 Key facts

Item Fact
Location 18th floor, Lau Ming Wai Academic Building
Design Museum-grade design and advanced facilities
Naming Named on 5 November 2019 following a gift from Mr. Harry Banga and Mrs. Indra Banga
Tenth anniversary Celebrated in early 2026 with the "Prototyping:" exhibition (i.e., in operation since around 2016)

2.2 How it got its name

CityU's heritage exhibition space began life as the CityU Exhibition Gallery. On 5 November 2019, following a donation from the entrepreneur and philanthropist Harindarpal Singh "Harry" Banga, founder, chairman and chief executive of the Caravel Group, the gallery was named the Indra and Harry Banga Gallery, in honour of Harry Banga and his wife Indra. Banga is an Indian-origin businessman rooted in Hong Kong; together with his wife he established The Caravel Foundation, which supports education and healthcare for disadvantaged children. CityU has also conferred on him honorary fellowship and an honorary doctorate. The gallery is another instance of the University's tradition of "naming gifts" — naming cultural facilities after their donors (for the mechanism, see 08-finances/benefactors-and-donors.md).

Naming a facility after its benefactor is a common "naming gift" arrangement in universities. Indra and Harry Banga are living donors; this article records their names and the history of the gift as neutral fact.

2.3 Positioning: museum-grade and interdisciplinary

The Indra and Harry Banga Gallery sits on the 18th floor of the Lau Ming Wai Academic Building and is open to the public free of charge (admission free). It is not an ordinary "student work showcase" but a professional exhibition space with museum-grade design and advanced facilities, used for exhibitions that are artistic, innovative, technically rich and interdisciplinary, conserving cultural heritage and bridging Chinese, Asian and Western cultures (CityU official).

The "interdisciplinary plus technical" positioning runs with the grain of the University as a whole: CityU is itself a university structurally built around interdisciplinarity (see 03-rankings/qs-asia-and-interdisciplinary.md), and the Banga Gallery projects that cross-boundary spirit onto art exhibitions — fusing art, technology, culture and history in one space.

2.4 Notable exhibitions over the years: from the Silk Road to Central African art

The gallery is known for major cross-cultural, cross-era heritage exhibitions. Verifiable highlights include:

Year Exhibition (official titles)
2024 “A Passion for Silk: The Road from China to Europe”, presenting two thousand years of silk history
2024–2025 “Might and Magnificence: Ceremonial Arms and Armour across Cultures”
2025 “Central African Art — Invocation of an Unseen World”, showing around 200 objects from the 19th to early 20th century
2026 "Prototyping:" (anniversary exhibition on interdisciplinary collaboration and artistic innovation)

From the Silk Road and ceremonial arms to Central African art, and then to an anniversary show foregrounding interdisciplinary invention — the curatorial horizon carries real depth in the history of civilisation while keeping an eye on contemporary innovation, in keeping with the University's "art × technology" character. Together with CityU's other display spaces (such as exhibitions from the School of Creative Media and the themed showcases of various faculties), the Banga Gallery forms part of the campus network for heritage and art display. Most of the gallery's exhibits over the years have been loans or private collections; each exhibition and its objects differ, and official announcements are authoritative.

  • A display of soft power. Beside the "hard" indicators of patents and rankings, the Banga Gallery is a window onto CityU's "softer" culture, showing the public the University's humanistic and artistic side.
  • Public engagement. Free and open to all, the gallery is one of the channels through which CityU connects with the community and carries its cultural responsibilities.
  • A tangible footnote to interdisciplinarity. Every cross-cultural, cross-media exhibition is the interdisciplinary philosophy of CityU made concrete.

Sources

Cross-references

Notes on consolidation for this article

Consolidation principles: verifiable facts, sources and cross-reference leads from the original cards are preserved; duplicated definitions appear only once; thematic relationships are explained through the parent-card structure rather than splitting neighbouring minor topics into thin separate cards. This regrouping merges the three cards covering the library and the gallery — overview and detail — into this single article; academic journals and the university press, being closely related, form one article; digital learning and IT stands alone.

Criteria for future updates

Future updates may enter the main text only from three types of material: first, primary sources such as the University's official website, annual reports, faculty pages, and regulatory or ranking bodies; second, verifiable facts from credible media, student media or public archives; third, public timelines that explain institutional changes. A lone screenshot, an undated rumour, or an unverifiable ranking slogan or personal opinion may be kept only as a lead for verification, never written up as fact. Should a single topic expand beyond 12,000 characters, it may be split into two parts; but adding a year, an exhibition or a collection figure should continue to be folded into this article, so as not to create new thin cards.

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