Library services have been an important activity of TIMR since its establishment.

The library was initially available only by TIMR research staff, but was opened to the public for free in 1926 to assist researchers. Its present official name Municipal Reference Library was given in 1941. Since then, it has been a leading library in this field.

As of March 2002 the library owns 127,705 books (106,750 Japanese books and 20,955 foreign books) and subscribes to 224 journals and magazines (182 Japanese and 42 foreign). It has a broad collection of research materials on local and urban issues (e.g., policies, planning, finance, economy and governance) and materials on history, statistics, master plans and research reports published by cities and prefectures. The Omori Collection and the Nakayama Collection are but a few examples of the historical collections of documents relating to the history of local governance during the Meiji period that are only available at this library.

In 1999 the library started to computerize new books, and made search terminals available to users in 2000. Its database project, for the further convenience of users, began in 2001.