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 2023, the Library offers a total collection of over 28,200 volumes of Chinese books, nearly 55,300 volumes of books in English or other languages, 31,100 music scores and parts, 48,500 audio-visual items, 215 active printed journal titles.
Electronic Collection
The Electronic Collection has been developed to allow information access anytime anywhere beyond the physical boundary. As of June 2023, the Library offers access to over 61,100 electronic plays, 274,400 electronic books, 172,200 electronic scores, 14,400 electronic journal titles, 89 reference and aggregator databases, 900 computer files on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM, 330,800 electronic videos and 182,700 music albums with the subscription to Naxos Music Library Online.
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 collects more and more digital content and users demand more and more information through the Internet. The Academy Libraries has launched the Digital Performing Arts Repository (DPAR) since 2013 to accommodate the digital born content and the digitized information for users to access information around the clock. In 2020, the Library is in the process of migrating the DPAR to the HKAPA Digital for enhanced search experience and unified resources management. The HKAPA Digital now contains more than 104,400 digital files.