North China's Shanxi province, which is home to various collections of ancient books, has been working hard to protect its cultural heritage in recent years.

The Shanxi Ancient Book Protection Center has sorted out 67,484 sets of ancient books in 716,944 volumes, and discovered a number of titles thought to be lost during a census of ancient works, laying a solid foundation for the establishment of the joint ancient book catalog system and the compilation of the General Catalogue of Ancient Chinese Books • Shanxi.

The restoration techniques used to restore ancient books have improved significantly in recent years. The Ancient Books Restoration Center of Shanxi Library gained the qualification for the restoration of removable cultural relics in 2021 and completed the restoration of 21 rare ancient national books. 

So far, 280 ancient books in Shanxi have been selected for inclusion in the "National Catalog of Rare Ancient Books". Shanxi Library, Shanxi Museum, Qixian Library, Shanxi University Library, Shanxi Normal University Library, and Taiyuan Library were rated as national key organizations for the protection of ancient books.

The Shanxi Ancient Book Protection Center also launched a project to protect folk stone inscriptions in 2010, with rubbings made of nearly 5,000 protected steles in over 10 counties.