It is the third largest collection in the Midwest, after the Universities of Chicago and Michigan. All but a few East Asian vernacular materials and a limited number of Western language reference works and current periodicals are located in the Asian Library. East Asian language newspapers are located in the Newspaper Library, East Asian law books in the Law Library, and East Asian rare books in the Rare Book and Special Collections Library. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Current emphasis on China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan.
Emphasis is on scholarly treatment rather than popularization, textbooks, and children's literature.
The Undergraduate Library normally collects more popular treatments and the Education and Social Sciences Library collects children's literature for its School Collection. The primary focus is on aspects of the languages, cultures, history, peoples, and societies of East Asia. Appropriate primary and secondary works, and bibliographic, and reference materials are acquired. Ordinarily, dissertations, theses and translations are selectively collected. Audio-visual materials are normally collected selectively.