Xu Teli Library

Xu Teli Library

Xu Teli Library is located on the North Campus of the Liangxiang Campus of Beijing Institute of Technology. The library was named after the former president Xu Teli in his honor. A statue of Xu Teli stands in the lobby on the first floor. The library has six floors in total: the first floor houses the service center, the second and third floors are reading rooms, the fourth and fifth floors contain computer labs, and the sixth floor is the director’s office.

The third-floor lobby of the library features an “Exhibition in Memory of Former President Xu Teli,” aiming to learn from Xu Teli and take him as a role model. A stone stele stands in front of the library, inscribed with Xu Teli’s famous quote: “Seek truth from facts, and do not assume you are always right.”

Xu Teli himself loved collecting books. In his early years, he spent half of his teaching income on purchasing books. Before the Great Revolution, he had already amassed a rich collection. However, due to the turmoil of war, many were lost or scattered. From the Yan’an period until after the liberation, his collection grew to over 20,000 volumes, including Chinese and foreign books and periodicals in social sciences and natural sciences, more than 5,000 volumes of traditional thread-bound books, over 5,600 volumes of new and old paperback books, more than 3,000 volumes of foreign language books, over 1,800 volumes of newspapers and periodicals, as well as maps and pictures. Many of the books contain marginalia and annotations. All of his collected books were donated to the state and arrived in Changsha in 1983, where they were handed over to the Hunan Library for preservation.