At the time this transformation occurred, the library contained nearly 30,000 items.

The first donation to the library was the valuable and extensive collection on history, literature and oriental studies of late Arunachalam Padmanabha donated by his father Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam.

1 of the 11th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica was given the accession number 1.

[citation needed] The University of Peradeniya library has changed its name from time to time as follows:[citation needed] The scholar H. A. I. Goonetilleke served the library as chief librarian from 1971 to 1979 and is largely responsible for its growth.

As part of its collection[2] of more than 430 000 volumes, the library contains printed and manuscript material from earlier times.