The first relatively large collection of Chinese books accessioned at Columbia University Libraries came from William Barclay Parsons, a professor at the School of Mines and a University Trustee, who led a team of American specialists to conduct a railroad survey in China. The book plate reads: "Given by William Barclay Parsons. This collection of Chinese classics is a memorial of the visit of Mr. Parsons to China." Professor Parsons proposed the Department of Chinese to be established in the university library.

In 1901, President Seth Low received a simple letter: “I send you herewith a deposit check for $12,000 as a contribution to the fund for Chinese learning in your university,” signed by “Dean Lung, a Chinese person.” Dean Lung was the valet of Horace Walpole Carpentier, another University Trustee. The letter prompted Carpentier to give additional donations of a $250,000 in honor of his friend and employee and create the Dean Lung Professorship of Chinese, the first endowment for Chinese studies at Columbia. In 1902, the noted Columbia anthropologist Franz Boas made a plea to establish “a great Oriental school” that would “imbue the public with a greater respect for the achievements of Chinese civilization.” That year, following a series of influential public lectures on Chinese history and culture at Columbia by Herbert Allen Giles of Cambridge University, the Department of Chinese was created and Friedrich Hirth from University of Munich was appointed as the first Dean Lung Professor and Chair.
Also in 1902, the Manchu government of China gave Columbia a massive collection of 5,044 encyclopedic books and the Chinese Library was founded, with Friedrich Hirth concurrently appointed as the first curator. The collection included excerpts and copies of most of the Chinese historical and literary legacy, representing the finest of classical scholarship in Chinese history. The Chinese Library is the earliest of its kind in North America. In the following decades, with the support of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as the exchange of librarians and publications with Chinese libraries--particularly the National Peking Library, which then played the role of National Library of China, managed by Columbia alumni--Columbia’s Chinese collection became a major American resource along with the collections at the Library of Congress and Harvard University. By the mid-1950s, the holdings contained important works in Manchu, Tibetan, and Mongolian languages.

The growth of the library also resulted from wide, active collaborative partnerships with domestic and international institutions. The library exchanged materials with almost all important university and government libraries and archives in Taiwan and China until the early 2000s when Columbia University Libraries discontinued the exchange department and discouraged materials exchange. But international collaboration with academic Taiwanese and Chinese institutions continues in creative ways, such as exchanging digitized materials in order for the Libraries to maximize the acquisition of and access to electronic content.

Students from Asia began to study at Columbia since the late 1800s. In the early decades of the 20th century, compared to its peer universities, Columbia attracted the largest number of Chinese students, with the Department of Chinese and the Chinese Library as contributing factors. The success of numerous theses, dissertations, and research projects depended largely on the availability of Chinese collection materials. Many Chinese students later became major figures in Chinese government, diplomacy, education, and numerous other academic disciplines. For instance, Hu Shih became a leader of the literary renaissance in Republican China. V.K. Wellington Koo was the top Chinese (later Taiwanese) diplomat for over half a century. Hu and Koo, and many other alumni as well, supported Columbia and the library in one way or another. Hu and Koo accommodated interviews for the Chinese Oral History Project of Columbia’s East Asian Institute and donated their personal papers and book collections. They also initiated fundraising by the Columbia Alumni Association of China to create a ten-year fund to annually match the library budgetary appropriations for Chinese collection development.

Over nearly twelve decades of development, the Chinese collection has become very strong in almost all subjects of humanities and social sciences. Traditionally, the four categories of old Chinese knowledge classification--namely classics, history, philosophy, and belles-lettre--were emphasized and in-depth and extensive collections were developed in line with the conventional concentrations of teaching and research. Thus, the traditional subject materials constitute the majority of the rich collection of Chinese rare books and special collections. In particular, local gazetteers, genealogies, and legal history collections, among others, represent the nation’s best. Chinese oral histories and archives at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML), Chinese missionary archives at the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, and Chinese textbooks at Teachers College are valuable unique and special resources.

In recent decades, however, along with the rise of China in the world and the growth of Chinese studies programs and enrollments at Columbia, the needs of Chinese studies faculty, researchers, and students have evolved to include interdisciplinary and contemporary studies. The library has responded by actively developing collections in the subjects of social sciences and cross-disciplinary studies, particularly in Chinese politics, economics, cultural, and film studies, in addition to traditional studies.

While print resources continue to grow rapidly, with the onset of the digital age and continued growth of digital contents and data, the library has actively collected electronic resources, particularly e-books, e-journals, numeric and spatial data, and comprehensive databases, since the early 2000s. The e-resources acquired have since surpassed the print holdings.

Besides print and digital collections, there are significant amounts of important microform collections and object material collections. Such materials are acquired very selectively.

Generally speaking, most of the library materials are acquired from the Greater China area (mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau). The primary language of the collection is in Chinese.

The print collection covers science and technology very selectively. But the e-resources cover Chinese science, engineering, and technology so as to meet the increasing need to study Chinese scientific knowledge and the development of science and technology at Columbia.