Photo: Director Jim Cheng (5th from left), Director Chialin Chang (6th from left）
representatives from Taiwan and Columbia University
Columbia University Libraries/Information Services’ (CUL/IS) C. V. Starr East Asian Library has received a significant donation of books by the National Central Library and other eight academic university presses in Taiwan, including National Taiwan University Press, National Taiwan Normal University Press, and Taipei National University of the Arts Press. The donation also includes a special work, “A Legacy Magnified – A Generation of Chinese Americas in Southern California 1980’s ~ 2010’s,” donated by South Coast Chinese Cultural Association.
The donation was coordinated by the Education Division, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in New York and consists of 476 titles and more than 500 volumes of recently published titles selected for an exhibition at the 2014 Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference in Philadelphia. The exhibition was organized by the National Central Library of China (NCL), Taiwan, in cooperation with the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.
The donation was formally presented at a reception in the exhibition hall on March 28 by Dr. Charlin Chang, Director of Education Division, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in New York. Jim Cheng, Director of the Starr Library, received the donation on behalf of Columbia University Libraries. Also present at the reception was Jenny Wang, Deputy Director of TECO Education Division; Hsiu-ling Sun and Huei-Zhu Chuang, Editors of Chinese Studies of NCL; Tzu-Ling Chiu of the National Taiwan University Press and Yu-jing Wang of Taipei National University of the Arts from Taiwan; Ria Koopmans-Debruijn, Head of Public Service at Starr Library; Sarah S Elman, Head of Technical Services at Starr Library; and Chengzhi Wang, Chinese Studies Librarian from the Starr Library.
“Through the exhibition in the conference and the donation to Columbia, the high quality scholarly publications of Chinese studies in Taiwan will be better known and used by American researchers and students”, said Dr. Charlin Chang, Director of Education Division, TECO. “The collaborative relations between Taiwan academic institutions and the U.S., particularly Columbia, will be further strengthened.”
“Columbia faculty and students will benefit greatly from this donation,” said Cheng. “Columbia has successfully cooperated with TECO and other Taiwan academic partners in several international outreach projects in 2013, including in Taiwan Documentary Film Festival and Symposium and the Lecture on Taiwan’s Digital Resources and the Study of Chinese Religious Culture, co-hosted by NLC and Columbia. We look forward to more cooperative projects in the future.”
The C.V. Starr East Asian Library is one of the major collections for the study of East Asia in the United States, with over 1 million volumes of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, and Western language materials, as well as some holdings in Mongol and Manchu, over 8,500 periodical titles, 4.5 million e-books, and many archival and special collections. The collection, established in 1902, is particularly strong in Chinese history, literature, and social sciences; Japanese literature, history, and religion, particularly Buddhism; Korean history, and modern Tibetan studies. For more information, please visit the Starr East Asian website.
Columbia University Libraries/Information Services (CUL/IS) is one of the top five academic research library systems in North America. The collections include over 12 million volumes, over 160,000 journals and serials, as well as extensive electronic resources, manuscripts, rare books, microforms, maps, and graphic and audio-visual materials.
The services and collections are organized into 22 libraries and various academic technology centers, including affiliates. CUL/IS employs more than 450 professional and support staff. The website of the Libraries is the gateway to its services and resources: library.columbia.edu.
