Scott Edward Harrison and Yeen-mei Wu, East Asia Library
Several years ago, a researcher needed to find out when writers first began to associate the literary work "Wenxuan" with Confucius. The Twenty-five Dynastic Histories database, produced by the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, was used to search 39,529,975 Chinese characters in texts dating from 2674 BC to 1911 AD. A list of occurrences with citations (and full text availability) was produced within 20 minutes. According to the researcher, no printed index or concordance could have yielded this result. Today, due to improvements in database technology, the same search takes a mere five seconds. This remarkable change in research capabilities illustrates the growth of the UW's East Asia Library and its ability to serve its users.
The East Asia Library had its beginning in a small collection of Chinese literary works purchased with a Rockefeller grant in 1937. Subsequent purchases augmented this modest start until, at the end of World War II, an unnamed, uncataloged and untended collection of materials resided in Suzzallo Library in a room known as the "Oriental Seminar Room."
In 1947, the materials in Suzzallo were moved to the new Far Eastern Library which was established in the basement of Thomson Hall. The library, headed by Ruth Krader, had for the first time a full-time staff and stable materials budget. In addition to the regular acquisition of books and serials, many important private collections were purchased over the next twenty years, thereby making the library one of the outstanding collections of Chinese, Japanese and Korean materials in the United States. Karl Lo became head of the library in 1968, and continued the growth and development started by his predecessor. He also brought the library into the age of automation. In 1976, the collection moved to Gowen Hall and was renamed the East Asia Library. Min-chih Chou was appointed head of the library in 1991. Currently, the collection numbers over 400,000 volumes and is the largest East Asian collection west of Chicago and north of Berkeley.
The East Asia Library is a self-contained branch of the UW Libraries. Due to the complexity of the languages involved, all technical services, ordering, cataloging, and receipt of materials, are performed in the East Asia Library by staff with appropriate language skills and training. Computers specially configured to accommodate Chinese, Japanese and Korean scripts are in daily use to process library materials as well as to access information sources from around the world.
In recent years, the library has become a leader in the provision of electronic information from East Asia.
The Chinese collection at the East Asia Library brought the first Chinese full-text retrieval database to the United States in 1990. The Twenty-five Dynastic Histories database is the largest single scholarly full-text database of Chinese materials in the world today.
The library also has access to over fifty-five other Chinese language databases, the majority of which are devoted to classical literature. There is also an index to periodical literature, a full-text newspaper database, and a biographical dictionary on CD-ROM.
In addition, UW affiliates may search four online databases from Taiwan via an Internet connection to the World Wide Web arranged through a special agreement with the Academia Sinica.
In September 1995, the East Asia Library became the first academic library in North America to gain access to the databases of the National Center for Science Information Systems in Tokyo, Japan. Faculty and students are able to search important Japanese databases such as the Japanese Union Catalog of Books and Periodicals, Directory of Researchers, Dissertation Index and Current Contents of Academic Serials in Japan. This online connection required six months of effort, testing different hardware and software configurations so that Japanese text could be sent and received over the Internet.
The Japanese collection also has several CD-ROM applications including the full-text of the Asahi newspaper for 1994 and a bilingual edition of the Telecommunications White Paper. Plans are currently underway to connect to a commercial online service in Japan so as to provide researchers with the most up-to-date information available.
The Korean collection currently has two CD-ROM databases. One is a catalog of the National Library of Korea, and the other is a multimedia introduction to Korea. More titles will be added in the future.
The East Asia Library supports research and teaching activities in a broad range of disciplines relating to East Asia. Through a recently developed home page the library hopes to provide increased access to information about East Asia to a much wider audience.