The new book The Monument in a Large World:Past and Present of the Zhan'en Memorial Library, is a distinctive and remarkable research monograph of university and library history owing to the wonderful narration in it.This article interprets the meaning of “the shoulders of giants” in The Monument in a Large World:Past and Present of the Zhan'en Memorial Library,introduces its insights into library practice,and presents the history of USST across the disciplines of library science,history,higher education,etc.It is a good example of research on library history as dual roles of “posterity” and “contemporary”,inform the reader that the history of library is a history written by some people,especially by “unimportant person”i.e. an ordinary librarian.