To meet the needs of students and professors at the university, the library collection includes books, periodicals, pamphlets and audiovisual materials in a wide range of fields including the humanities, the sciences, law, medicine, engineering, agriculture, management, public health, electrical engineering and social sciences. The library collection presently includes more than 2,400,000 volumes (including books, bound periodicals, bound newspapers and various sorts of audiovisual materials); 24,000 periodicals; and 98 newspapers. It is the largest library collection in Taiwan.

In addition the library holds over 50,000 rare books in Chinese and other languages, the largest such holding of any university library in Taiwan. The Tan-Hsin Tang An (judiciary archive of Tamsui and Hsin-chu area), Ming editions of stitched binding books, the Rekidai Hoan (diplomatic archive of Ryukyu Kingdom), and the collection of European incunabula are particularly valuable.In addition, the collection includes a wealth of material on Taiwan history, Southeast Asia, and Japanese materials from the period of Japanese rule in Taiwan.

The Library has been designated one of the official repositories of government publications and maintains agreements to exchange publications with over 2,000 academic and research institutions in over sixty countries, in this way fostering inter-university and international exchange.