The Reserve Collection contains books and articles that are recommended by instructors for the courses they teach in the current semester as well as past examination papers of some departments. Only one item may be borrowed at a time and loan periods range from 2 hours to 2 days. They are shorter than those for normal loans, so that more students may have access to these materials. The Reference Collections include materials such as the latest editions of dictionaries, encyclopedias, gazetteers, yearbooks, handbooks, directories, indexes, bibliographies, atlases, and concordances. The English reference materials are shelved on Level 3 whereas the Chinese reference materials and the Reference Hong Kong collection are located on Level 4.
All Reference books are for in-library use only.
English bound journals are shelved on Level 4, Level 5 and Level 6 while all Chinese bound journals are kept on Level 7. Current newspaper and periodicals indexes are placed on Level 4. Back issues of newspapers are kept for the current month and the previous month. Microform backfiles are available for selective newspaper titles. As of June 2000, there are over 60,000 items of multimedia materials in a variety of formats including CD-ROMs, VCDs, DVDs, CDs, computer software, videocassettes, laser discs, and audiocassettes.