In 1928, Fu Ssu-nien (1896-1950), dean of the college of liberal arts at Sun Yat-sen University, founded the Academia Sinica Institute of History and Philology (IHP) in Guangzhou, China. In 1949, IHP moved to Taiwan. In 1960, IHP began building a library to house ancient books and documents. To commemorate its completion in 1961, Hu Shih (1891-1962), then President of Academia Sinica, named it the Fu Ssu-nien Library (FSL). Concerning the transport of documents during exile, IHP records state: “Two warships were used to carry researchers, their families, ancient texts, etc. from China to Taiwan. Throughout the entire Academia Sinica’s relocation to Taiwan, only the Institute of History and Philology underwent this.”

FSL has mainly collected works on history, classics, literature, linguistics, archaeology, ancient scripts, and anthropology. It is a treasure trove of rare books in Taiwan, with an excellent selection of thread-bound books – an important humanities research library suiting specialists’ documentary needs.

Of the FSL ancient book resources linked to by our platform, half are in the genre of local gazetteers and half are in the genre of “collections of individual writers” (別集) under “belles-lettres” (集部). From these, it can be seen that, after the late Ming dynasty, publications of “short popular recreational works” gradually increased. Such “short sketch essays” (小品文) focusing on the sophisticated accomplishments and artistry of the literati leisure class represented a large shift in the concept of literature during the late Ming dynasty, such as in: Cuiyuge pingxuan tangreshi xiansheng xiaopin, juan 2.

The U.S. Library of Congress is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. The Chinese collection of its subsidiary Asian Division began in 1869 during the reign of the Qing Emperor Tongzhi (1861-1875), when the Qing government gifted 10 titles (in 905 volumes). The Library subsequently continued to purchase Chinese books in the Manchu, Han Chinese, Mongolian, and Hui languages. After the 1950s, it continued with Chinese language books from Taiwan and Hong Kong, and established document exchange agreements with many repository institutions. Today, the Library’s Chinese collection has inventoried over 960,000 volumes and is still in the process of organizing and cataloguing more Chinese titles.

One of the most notable features of the Asian Division books linked on this platform are the numerous Ming-Qing dynasty “books annotated and selected by renowned scholars.” These are titled in bibliographies as “…pingzhu…shixuan” 「○○○評註○○詩選」 or “…pingzhu…wenxuan” 「○○○評註○○文選」, for example: Xinke qiantaishi pingzhu liyulin tang shixuan yu, Tanghuiyuan jingxuan pidian tangsong mingxian celun wencui, etc. It can be seen that Ming-Qing publishers often used the names of “renowned scholars” as a marker of excellence, a quality guarantee, and a marketing technique.

The East Asian Library of Princeton University collects East Asian materials, mainly in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages, with the majority of their Chinese rare book collection being from the Ming dynasty. The works linked to this platform can be summarized in the two categories below.

(I) Imperial examination preparatory literature: These books can be organized into 9 types: the Four Books, Five Classics, eight-legged essays, selected books on classical Chinese literature, books on how to write argumentative essays, Hanlin school books, books on general history, leishu, and Hundred Schools of Thoughts books.

(II) Applied practice books: These include books on divination, medicine, local geography, and a few on religion. Such books occupied a significant proportion of sales in the Ming-Qing publishing market, but as everyday reading material for the lower classes, they were not stored in famous collections. Times have changed, and Ming-Qing scholars and historians today must seek this commonplace literature from overseas collections in order to uncover commercial, practical, or everyday aspects of the Ming-Qing printing industry. Thus, our platform’s Linked Open Data meets scholars’ bibliographic needs regarding historical texts and editions, enabling humanities researchers to more easily acquire resources on rare and unique copies of books stored in overseas collections.

The Harvard-Yenching Library is the primary repository for East Asian-related materials at the Harvard Library. It houses works in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Tibetan, Manchu, Mongolian, as well as Western languages, totaling over 1 million volumes. The resources linked to in our platform offer, in particular, a glimpse into the Ming dynasty’s “rise of the contemporary text (時文)” (vis-à-vis “new texts” (今文) and “old texts” (古文)), as well as a vast collection of “books on general history” (通史類) compilations.

Lang Yin (1487-1566) wrote in Qixiu leigao – shiwen shike tushuqi: “Before Chenghua, there was no publication of contemporary texts. The local magistrate in Hangzhou, Shen Chen, published a volume of Jinghua richao, and obtained huge profits. After publications rose around Fujian province, they were gradually popularized to many provinces’ official curriculums.” This passage explains that publication of non-classic contemporary texts in the Ming dynasty was not considered significant before Emperor Chenghua’s reign (1465-1487). These types of books were also historically less sought out by collectors. However, much of the Harvard-Yenching Library’s collection consists of such privately printed “non-classics” (俗書), and if their date of publication is examined, most fall after Emperor Chenguha’s reign, serving as evidence of the late Ming to early Qing phenomenon of “contemporary text” publication.

Meanwhile, compilations of “books on general history” constituted a major development in historiography. Before Emperor Jiajing’s reign (1521-1567), these Ming dynasty general history compilations focused on “general outlines” (綱目體). After Emperor Jiajing’s reign, “comprehensive general histories” (綜合體通史) began to be compiled. The appearance of the latter originated from the renewed attention paid during the mid-Ming dynasty to the “twenty-one dynastic histories.” A “full history” was too long for one person to manage, thus editors began to compile abridged general histories. At the time, a few different categories of general history books existed: (1) works continuing or emulating Zheng Qiao’s Tongzhi, such as Hongjian lu or Hanshi; (2) chronological histories abbreviating the twenty-one dynasties, such as Shijiushi jielue or Lidai shishu daquan; (3) categorical history books, such as Zuobian or Yuanshi tongshi. Many of these general histories were produced to meet the demands of imperial exam candidates, whose exam essays had to display to examiners their erudite knowledge of the past and present. Among these general history exam prep books, gangjian (綱鑑) was a popular genre that became widespread.