The CUHK Library catalogue interface has moved from Big Five to Unicode since July 2003. With a web browser also using Unicode encoding, users can search and see an improved display of diacritics, traditional and simplified Chinese characters, Japanese kana and Korean hangul. In order to make full use of the capability of the Unicode interface, the Library has converted hundreds of internal EACC/CCCII codings to align with the current Unicode standard.

CUHK is the first UGC library to migrate to Unicode and complete the conversion. This inhouse conversion started in July 2003 and was successfully completed within one month.