The NPU library was established by combining the library of the former Northwest Institute of Engineering with that of the former Xi'an Institute of Aeronautics. The library of Northwest Institute of Engineering was founded in 1938. The predecessor of Xi'an Institute of Aeronautics library was, in 1952, the library of East China Institute of Aeronautics which consisted of aeronautical books and other reading materials from Jiaotong University, Nanjing University(formerly the Central University), Zhejiang University, and Tongji University. In 1956, the library was moved from Nanjing to Xi'an. In 1970, the Department of Aeronautics of Harbin Institute of Military Engineering joined with NPU along with its books.
    The library takes a total area of approximately 46,000 square meters consisting of an eastern and western part on Youyi campus as well as the library on the Chang'an campus. The western part was established in 1958 while the eastern part was built in 1993 with a donation of 5,000,000 HK$ by Mr. Shao Yifu, a well-known patriot from Hong Kong together with the university's financial support of 17,500,000 RMB. The floor area of the eastern part is about 10,600 square meters. The new library on Chang'an campus began trail operation on May 4, 2013. It was designed as a comprehensive research modern university library providing integrated services of collecting, lending, reading and studying. It takes an area of 32,000 square meters and has a capacity of 1,600,000 books and 4,000 reading seats.
    As required by the university's teaching and research, the library widely collects international and domestic literatures, carriers and languages, forming the comprehensive and multidisciplinary collection system that features aeronautics, astronautics, marine engineering and national defense. It focuses on high-tech disciplines such as computer science and engineering, electronics and telecommunications, automatic control, machinery, materials science and engineering with sciences, engineering, management, humanities, economics and law as additional areas of study. The accumulated total of literature collections includes more than 3,480,000 volumes. In addition，it has more than 1,410,000 electronic books in Chinese or foreign languages, 30,000 electronic journals in Chinese or foreign languages, and about 6,640,000 electronic dissertations in Chinese or foreign languages. It has foreign databases such as CSA Illumina (NTIS, Aerospace, Materials Science, Engineering Research), Ei Village, AIAA Meeting Papers, AIAA Journal, Wiley-Blackwell, ISTP, IEL, SCI, PQDT-B, PQDD-FT, Springer-SLCC, Jane's Air and System Library, SDOL, U.S.Military Standard, and Chinese databases such as Shusheng, China Academic Journal (CAJ), Chinese excellent master's full thesis, Chinese excellent doctor's full dissertations, Wanfang Data, VIPand Chinese national standard, involving CD and network databases, referring to 135 databases and over 372 sub-databases.
    The library provides the readers with services such as information retrieval, scientific and technological consults, novelty searching, and appraisal. It keeps in regular contact with the international and domestic book and intelligence community, lends and borrows from each other and shares the documents in their original languages.
    Now there are 65 librarians, including 19 at or above an associate professor level, 25 with intermediate professional title. 
    The NPU library is now undergoing a transition from a traditional library to a modern one. There is determination by the library staff to create more opportunities, provide a wider variety of services and strive for the goal to make the library a first-class one that will become internationally well-known.

Distribution of library collections