The East Asia Department was established as a separate department of Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin in 1922. It is responsible for both Western publications on East Asia and all kinds of material written in the languages of the East Asian countries. The latter thus include materials in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur, as well as in the "minority" languages of China.

The East Asia Department is in charge of a special collection focusing on East Asia ("Sondersammelschwerpunkt") within the federal system of German libraries supervised and partly financed by the Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Council).

Funded by the Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, the East Asia Department offers access to digital ressources for East and Southeast Asian studies through the Virtual Library East and Southeast Asia - CrossAsia.