The library was founded in October 1958 and officially opened to the public in May 1, 1959. Its name was "Huaiyin Library" at the beginning. In November 1964, it was renamed "Qingjiang Library". In March 1983, Qingjiang Library was upgraded to "Huaiyin Library" (prefectural level)" and was renamed "Huai'an Library" since the city changed its name in February 2001.

Since the establishment of the library, it has always performed the functions of social education, and has actively carried out various forms of extended services on the basis of doing a good job in the traditional position services. Through lectures, exhibitions and training, it provides diversified and personalized services for the public, attracting more and more people into the library; through the establishment of branches, construction of basic network and mobile services, the library can meet the reading needs of the whole city, extending the breadth and depth of library services.

After half a century of development, Huai'an Library has a large collection of books, newspapers and periodicals, audio-visual materials, electronic books and other literature resources. Currently, the library comprises more than 800,000 volumes(including more than 10,000 ancient books),covering an area of nearly 30,000 square meters. In 2013, it was awarded as the national level public library by the Ministry of Culture of China.

In May 18, 2017, the new library of Huai'an was completed and opened to the public.

The new library is located in Ecological New Town near the Li Canal. It is the stem part of a huge "cultural ship", which is the main body of four buildings (Huai'an Libraries, Cultural Center, Art Gallery and Planning Exhibition Hall), with a distinctive style of the times and cultural connotation of the canal. The building area of the new library is 30000 square meters, ranking among the top municipal public libraries in the province. It is designed to have 2 million volumes, 1500 reading seats, and the capacity of receiving 5000 readers a day. Besides, it contains Huai'an Center of the National Cultural Information Resources Sharing Project, inquiry services of government information openness, service points of reading Government Gazette, library of Huai'an local ancient books and records, reading rooms for sight handicapped readers, expert research rooms and lecture hall, exhibition halls, movie halls and leisure book bar. It is a smart library with the functions of study, reading, information exchange and cultural leisure. With the 24-hour self-service library, readers can borrow and read books at any time.

Address：No.17, Xiangyu Street, Ecological New Town, Huai'an, Jiangsu
Tel：0517-80827100, 80826700