Dr. Tung-li Yuan and the Library of Congress: A Four-Decade Relationship

(The following post is by Ian Chapman, Chinese Reference Librarian, Asian Division)

Dr. Tung-li Yuan 袁同禮 (Yuan Tongli, 1895-1965) was a giant not just in the development of modern librarianship in China, but in building Chinese collections and bibliographic studies in the West. The Library of Congress was a focus for much of his international work. Librarian of Congress L. Quincy Mumford noted in 1967 that “Dr. Yuan’s relationship with the Library of Congress spanned a period of nearly 44 years,” from 1921 until 1965. In this year, the 130th anniversary of his birth, we reflect on Yuan’s role linking libraries in China and abroad, especially the Library of Congress.

Between 1920 and 1923, Yuan earned degrees in history from Columbia University and library studies from the New York State Library School in Albany. He was the fifth Chinese student to attend library school in the U.S., and certainly the most influential. For three summers he worked as an intern at the Library of Congress, where in addition to cataloging Chinese materials, he advised on new acquisitions. This was all before the founding of the Library’s Division of Chinese Literature in 1928 (the forerunner of today’s Asian Division) and the hiring of specialist librarians. As a result, Yuan’s work contributed much to the collection’s early development.

After further studies in London and Paris, in 1924, Yuan returned to China, where he spent the next quarter of a century developing modern libraries and librarianship. For most of this period, he was associate director and then director of China’s foremost library, the National Library of Peiping 國立北平圖書館, founded in 1929 in the old imperial capital Peking (Beijing; between 1928 and 1949 named Peiping), Yuan’s native place. Yuan promoted professional library training and technological innovations such as microform and bulk-printed catalog cards. He also maintained close connections with international scholarly communities, such as by editing the English-language “Quarterly Bulletin of Chinese Bibliography” and establishing programs with foreign libraries for the exchange of materials and librarians.

Among the international partnerships Yuan fostered, the one with the Library of Congress was especially deep and enduring. In 1928, Dr. Arthur W. Hummel, chief of the Library of Congress’s newly formed Division of Chinese Literature, wrote to Yuan, then associate director of the Metropolitan Library 北京圖書館 in Peking, to solicit his help recommending materials for acquisition. Hummel had just returned to the U.S. after three years’ study in Peking, where he had known Yuan and been a guest at his house. Hummel praised Yuan’s former contributions as a Library intern: “We still see your beautiful hand-writing in many of our books, so we are reminded that you were once here.”

Between 1928 and 1937, first at the Metropolitan Library (later renamed Peihai Library 北海圖書館) and then at the National Library of Peiping (formed from the 1929 merger of the Peiping Library and Peihai Library), Yuan helped build the Chinese collection at the Library of Congress by recommending materials and facilitating their acquisition. For example, in 1929 Hummel asked Yuan to commission hand-written copies of two manuscript histories of the Ming dynasty compiled in the Qing dynasty. The volumes, with immaculate calligraphy, arrived in 1932. Attributed by Yuan to Wan Sitong 萬斯同 (1638-1702), these are catalogued as “Ming shi” 明史 and “Ming shi ji zhuan” 明史紀傳. In 1932, Hummel asked Yuan to help source gazetteers, a collection he was “very anxious to build up.” Titles would often be acquired through “approval,” meaning Yuan would ship books on trust that the Library would reimburse the cost. Only with difficulty did Hummel convince the Library to cover a larger than expected consignment of gazetteers and rubbings in 1933 during the Great Depression. The same year, Yuan surprised the Library with news of an extraordinary gift, delivered late in 1934: a 7-foot-8-inch-wide wooden plaque inscribed at Yuan’s request by Hsu Shih-ch’ang 徐世昌 (Xu Shichang), President of the Republic of China from 1918 to 1922. For many years, it adorned the Library’s Main Reading Room. (Much of this information is contained in the Manuscript Division’s Arthur W. Hummel Sr. correspondence series, which includes letters between Hummel and Yuan, as well as the Report of the Librarian of Congress for 1935, accessible online via HathiTrust).

The Library of Congress, in turn, sent to Yuan’s National Library of Peiping materials such as cataloging schedules, government documents, reports of the Librarian of Congress, atlases, microfilms, bibliographies, indexes, and photocopies of catalog cards and rare books. Yuan had a scholarly interest in “Yongle dadian” 永樂大典 (The Yongle Encyclopedia), a massive but largely lost Ming dynasty encyclopedia surviving in only a few hundred manuscript volumes. Over several years, Hummel garnered time on Congress’s much-in-demand photostat machines to copy all of the Library’s volumes, then totaling 38 (now 41), sending the last of these to Yuan in 1936.

In 1934 and 1935, Yuan sent proposals to formalize exchanges between the National Library of Peiping and the Library of Congress, whereby both libraries would send duplicate publications and catalog cards to one another. Hummel strongly supported the idea. In a 1936 letter to Navy Secretary Claude A. Swanson, Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam requested that the U.S. Navy install photographic equipment in Peiping as part of a program for each library to copy materials sought by the other onto “motion-picture film” (microfilm) for exchange. He advised the Navy to put its representative “at the disposal of Dr. T.L. Yuan… an old friend of Americans.”

Japan’s full-scale invasion of China in 1937 prevented the implementation of formal exchange schemes. However, the war engendered other forms of cooperation, with Yuan again playing a central role. In 1938, Yuan entrusted Tsien Tsuen-hsuin 錢存訓 (Qian Cunxun), from the National Library of Peiping’s Nanking (Nanjing) branch, with removing the library’s most valuable rare books from Peiping to Shanghai’s foreign “concessions” (enclaves administered by colonial powers). Yuan and the Chinese ambassador to the United States, Hu Shih 胡適 (Hu Shi), arranged for their transport to the U.S. and safekeeping at the Library of Congress. According to Tsien’s own account, in late 1941 he worked with an inside contact to smuggle over 30,000 volumes through Japanese-controlled Shanghai customs. The last of three shipments left Shanghai on December 5, two days before Pearl Harbor. News spread that the vessel had run aground and been captured, though somehow the books arrived. With the permission of the Chinese government, the Library of Congress made microfilm copies. Ironically, it was in Washington rather than Beijing that Yuan was reunited in 1949 with the precious cargo he had set in motion. Just months after his death in 1965, the books were returned to the Taipei-based government of the Republic of China; they are now held at the Library of the National Palace Museum.

Yuan also played a critical role in maintaining the flow of information in and out of China during and after the war. In 1937, Yuan sent appeals on behalf of the Library Association of China and the National Library of Peiping to the American Library Association and Library of Congress to ship books and journals for redistribution to Chinese educational institutions. Many universities had relocated to the southwestern cities of Chungking (Chongqing) and Kunming, not occupied by Japan, but lacked libraries to support teaching and research. Yuan was the Chinese coordinator of various “Books for China” initiatives, partnering with an ad hoc U.S. alliance of scholarly associations (the American Library Association and American Council of Learned Societies), federal cultural institutions (the Library of Congress and Smithsonian Institution), the State Department, the Rockefeller Foundation, and various universities. In 1944-1945 the U.S. military airlifted shipments of current books and journals—the latter often as microfilm, copied by the Library of Congress—over “the Hump” (Himalayas) from Calcutta to Chungking . Some return flights carried Chinese publications that Yuan had purchased, initially with his own money, for American libraries. Larger scale deliveries commenced at the end of the war. However, the outbreak of civil war between Nationalist and Communist party forces soon stymied such efforts. Yuan also served in Republic of China diplomatic missions to the United Nations’ founding conference in San Francisco in 1945 and to the 4th UNESCO General Conference in Paris in 1949.

In 1949, twenty-eight years after his first summer as an intern, Yuan returned to the Library of Congress, having relocated to the United States with his family. Under the title Consultant in Chinese Literature, he completed “A Descriptive Catalog of Rare Chinese Books in the Library of Congress” 國會圖書館藏中國善本書錄, begun by his student Wang Chung-min 王重民 (Wang Zhongmin). After stints at Stanford University and elsewhere beginning in 1951, in 1957 Yuan took up a permanent position in the Library of Congress’s Descriptive Cataloging Division, transferring the following year to the Subject Cataloguing Division, where he remained until his retirement due to illness in January 1965. Sadly, he passed away just three weeks later.

Part of Yuan’s work at the Library was creating bibliographic records. Though internationally acclaimed as a librarian, scholar, educator, administrator, and diplomat, Dr. Yuan often declared: “I just love cataloguing.” In China, Yuan had published extensively on bibliographic history and library studies, but his years at the Library of Congress saw his most prolific scholarly output. Between 1956 and 1964, he published numerous bibliographies on topics including Western and Russian scholarship on China, doctoral dissertations by Chinese students in America and Europe, historical sources relating to Xinjiang, Chinese economic and social development, musical scores, mathematics, and traditional art books. The most influential of these was his “China in Western Literature: A Continuation of Cordier’s Bibliotheca Sinica.” He devoted long hours to fulfilling the unstinting standards he set himself in cataloging and research.

Dr. Yuan left an indelible mark on librarianship and Chinese studies both in China and the West, and helped forge strong international scholarly ties. The Library of Congress benefited greatly from his contributions, whether as a partner or a member of the Library.

Scholars can find correspondence between Yuan, during his time as a library administrator in China from the 1920s to the 1940s, and the Library of Congress in the Library of Congress Archives Central File Series, 1895-1955 and the Arthur W. Hummel Sr. Correspondence Series (1927-1942). Both can be accessed in the Manuscript Reading Room. In addition, the University of Chicago Library holds the Yuan, T’ung-li (Yuan, Tongli) Papers 1940-1964, mostly comprising materials from Yuan’s post-war period of residency in the U.S., beginning in 1949.

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Further Reading

Selected writings by Tung-li Yuan
For brevity, collections rather than individual works are listed, excepting the first title.

Yuan, Tung-li. China in Western Literature: A Continuation of Cordier’s Bibliotheca Sinica. New Haven: Far Eastern Publications, Yale University, 1958.
Yuan Tongli 袁同礼; Guojia tushuguan 国家图书馆, ed. Yuan Tongli wenji 袁同礼文集. Beijing: Guojia tushuguan chubanshe, 2010.
Yuan Tongli 袁同礼. Yuan Tongli zhu shumu huibian 袁同礼著书目汇编. Beijing: Guojia tushuguan chubanshe, 2010.

About Tung-li Yuan

Yuan Cheng 袁澄, ed. Siyi lu: Yuan Shouhe xiansheng jinian ce 思憶錄: 袁守和先生紀念册. Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1967.
Zhu Chuanyu 朱傳譽, ed. Yuan Tongli zhuanji ziliao 袁同禮傳記資料. Taibei: Tianyi chubanshe, 1979.
Guojia tushuguan 国家图书馆, ed. Yuan Tongli jinian wenji 袁同礼纪念文集. Beijing: Guojia tushuguan chubanshe, 2012.
Lei Qiang 雷强. Yuan Tongli nianpu changbian 袁同礼年谱长编. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2024.

References

“Mumford noted…” L. Quincy Mumford, “T.L. Yuan and the Library of Congress,” in Siyi lu: Yuan Shouhe xiansheng jinian ce
思憶錄: 袁守和先生紀念册 (T.L. Yuan: A Tribute), ed. Yuan Cheng 袁澄 (Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshu guan, 1967), 35.

“wrote to Yuan…” Letter, Arthur W. Hummel to T.L. Yuan, May 3, 1928, Arthur W. Hummel Sr. Correspondence Series, Library of Congress Archives, 1927-1942, Manuscript Division.

“Much of this information…” Letters, Arthur W. Hummel to T.L. Yuan, Arthur W. Hummel Sr. Correspondence Series, Library of Congress Archives, 1927-1942, Manuscript Division. Relevant dates include September 4, 1929; October 17, 1932, and November 22, 1932; June 20, June 23, and June 27, 1933; and December 22, 1933.

“He advised the Navy…” Letter, Herbert Putnam to the Secretary of the Navy, July 9, 1936, container 44, Central File Series, Library of Congress Archives, 1895-1955, Manuscript Division.

“he worked with an inside contact…” Qian Cunxun 錢存訓, “Beiping tushuguan shanben shuji yun Mei jingguo: jinian Yuan Shouhe xiansheng” 北平圖書館善本書籍運美經過: 紀念袁守和先生, 1966; reprinted in Siyi lu: Yuan Shouhe xiansheng jinian ce 思憶錄: 袁守和先生紀念册 (T.L. Yuan: A Tribute), ed. Yuan Cheng 袁澄 (Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshu guan, 1967), 114-118.

“partnering with…” See Yuan Zhou and Calvin Elliker, “From the People of the United States of America: The Books for China Programs during World War II,” in Libraries & Culture, 32.2 (1997), 191-226.

“Dr. Yuan often declared…” John A. Pope, “A Delightful Human Being,” in Siyi lu: Yuan Shouhe xiansheng jinian ce 思憶錄: 袁守和先生紀念册 (T.L. Yuan: A Tribute), ed. Yuan Cheng 袁澄 (Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshu guan, 1967), 37.