By Wang Zhiyong
China.org.cn staff reporter

The exterior of the new building of the Chinese national library.

The interior of the new building of the Chinese national library.

The new National Library of China (NLC) opened to the public at 2 PM on September 9. Frequent readers formed long queues to take a first look at the new building.

The old National Library building, completed in 1987, was listed as one of Beijing's "top ten architectural landmarks of the 1980s", but at 12,000 a day, visitors had long since outgrown its capacity and a new building had been planned several years ago.

Started in late 2004, the new 1.2 billion yuan complex is shaped like a gigantic book. It has 2,900 seats in its 80,000 square meter area and is expected to be able to meet increasing demand for the next 30 years.

The completion of the new building makes the National Library of China the world's third largest library.

The new building has been designed with the needs of the public in mind and aims to provide space and comfort to readers. Anyone in the world can visit the library on production of a passport or ID card, said deputy curator Chen Li.

In the central reading spaces, enclosed by a glass roof and glass walls, readers will feel like they are sitting in a sunny courtyard, he added.

A new digital library service also opened to public yesterday. The LAN (local area network) of the digital library covers the entire building, and anyone with a laptop can explore the database free of charge. There are also 560 computers available for readers without laptops. The computers are free for the first hour and cost 3 yuan per hour thereafter. For disabled people the service is totally free.