The Academy Libraries has built up a sizeable collection of performing scores, plays, audio recordings of music materials, and video recordings in dance, drama and motion pictures as well as liberal arts and language studies. The Library continues to develop the electronic resources on various performing arts subjects, which can be accessed in the Library or remotely through the Internet. The Academy Archives containing the productions and publications of the Academy community is well preserved not only in its original format but also in an in-house digital repository, namely HKAPA Digital.
Print & Physical Collection
As of June 2026, the Library offers a total collection of over 28,800 volumes of Chinese books, nearly 54,400 volumes of books in English or other languages, 28,200 music scores and parts, 46,200 audio-visual items.
Electronic Collection
The Electronic Collection has been developed to allow information access anytime, anywhere beyond the physical boundary. As of June 2026, the Library subscribes to 93 reference and aggregator databases, offering access to over 77,000 electronic plays, 1,320 electronic filmscripts, 357,500 electronic books, 181,000 electronic scores, 17,000 electronic journal titles, 64,600 electronic videos, and 201,900 online music albums.
Academy Archives
The Academy Libraries has been collecting publications of the Academy and works created and/or performed by the staff and students of the Academy in the process of teaching and learning. The purpose is to preserve creative experiments of different generations of staff and students and their end products for future scholars and practitioners.
Materials collected include programme diaries, production files and video-recordings of performances and thesis of Master students and materials from local performing arts group.
With the emergence of digital technologies, the Academy Libraries has started preserving the archival materials in digital format and has developed the Digital Performing Arts Repository (DPAR) since 2013. The repository was renamed as HKAPA Digital after the data and system migration in 2020 and now contains more than 149,900 digital files. Staff and students can access this digital archive anytime, anywhere.