By network access, hands-on experience and literature research, the authors investigates on functions of digital productions of Chinese ancient books in assisting humanities research. Target databases are classified into 3 categories: collection retrieval database, quantitative analysis database and digital humanity platform. Tabulations are used to help illustrate characteristics of different types of digitization products. The paper analyzes functions of assisting research of different databases from the perspective of system function and looks into the future. The development direction of ancient book digitalization is a research-oriented digital humanities platform that combines academic tradition of literature sorting and modern information technology, which calls for cooperation between humanists and information scientists.