The Library of the Institute of West Asian and African Studies (IWAAS), established in the 1960s, is responsible for books, journals, data collections and Informatization work for the IWAAS. The library’s reference room has a collection of more than 30,000 books specialized in West Asian and African Studies.

The reference room subscribes to more than 300 specialized academic journals in Chinese, English, French, Arabic and other languages, all of which are core academic journals on West Asian and African Studies. It now has more than 8,000 bound volumes of back issues.

The reference room also provides electronic databases such as the IWAAS Database which is home to nearly 100,000 data items, including book catalog, bibliographic references to documents, full-text database and chronicle of events. 

Since 1982, the reference room has been in charge of organizing and publishing chronicles of key events in West Asian and African countries, covering the region’s politics, economy, culture, etc. These collections serve as important reference for researchers of Middle East and African studies.

The reference room is also responsible for management and maintenance of IWAAS official websites. All data concerning books and journals in the library are accessible through its database, and all the books and resources are available to the institute’s researchers.