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Posted by: Anchi Hoh
(The following is a post by Susan Meinheit, Mongolian and Tibetan reference specialist, Asian Division.) On July 25, 2018, the Asian Division welcomed 11 students from the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School summer class, “The History and Culture of the Tibetan Book,” for a special one-day field trip to learn about the Tibetan collection. Students …
Posted in: Asian Division
Posted by: Anchi Hoh
(The following is a post by Jeffrey Wang, reference specialist for the Chinese Collection, Asian Division.) The “Strange Tales from Liaozhai” (Liao zhai zhi yi 聊齋誌異), written in classical Chinese, is a collection of short stories from the early Qing dynasty (1644-1912). It consists of 491 tales in 16 volumes, mostly stories about fox-fairies, flower-spirits, …
Posted in: Asian Division, East Asia
Posted by: Anchi Hoh
(The following is a post by Sonya Lee, Korea reference specialist, Asian Division.) An 1859 edition of the well-known Confucian work, “Oryun haengsilto” 五倫行實圖 (“Illustrated guide to the five relationships”), is one of some 3,500 volumes held in the Korean rare books collection in the Asian Division of the Library of Congress. This work exemplifies …
Posted in: Asian Division
Posted by: Cameron Penwell
(The following is a post by Chelsea Hudson, Junior Fellow, Asian Division, Summer 2018.) The process of inventorying and cataloging the hundreds of thousands of items scattered across Library archives is in itself an exercise in reconstructing history. Each book or journal records the anonymous hands that have censored its text, drawn in its margins, …
Posted in: Asian Division, East Asia, Junior Fellows
Posted by: Cameron Penwell
(This is a repost from the Library of Congress Blog. The authors are Sonya Lee, a Korean reference specialist in the Asian Division, and Cameron Penwell, a Japanese reference librarian. ) The Library’s Asian Division is home to one of the most prominent North Korean collections in the Western Hemisphere. While a growing number of scholars have …
Posted in: Asian Division, East Asia
Posted by: Anchi Hoh
(The following is a post by Hong Ta-Moore, Southeast Asia reference librarian, Asian Division.) Southeast Asia is home to eleven countries, nearly 700 million people, and a rich variety of religious traditions. The Philippines, for example, is one of two Southeast Asian countries with a majority Christian population (the other being East Timor). According to …
Posted in: Asian Division, Southeast Asia
Posted by: Anchi Hoh
(The following is a repost by Zoran Sinobad, reference librarian in the Moving Image Research Center. The post originally appeared on the Now See Hear! Blog.) Shortly after 7 a.m. on November 6, 1928, two mounted policemen in green breeches and black tunics appeared on the stone bridge at the main entrance to the Imperial Palace …
Posted in: Asian Division
Posted by: Cameron Penwell
(The following post is an interview conducted by Jonathan Loar and Cameron Penwell, reference specialists in the Asian Division, with Dr. Emer O’Dwyer, associate professor of History and East Asian Studies at Oberlin College). This year, the annual conference of the Association of Asian Studies (AAS) was held in Washington, D.C. from March 22-25. At …
Posted in: Asian Division, East Asia
Posted by: Anchi Hoh
(The following is a post by Eiichi Ito, Japanese Reference Specialist, Asian Division.) The Library of Congress recently launched the Japanese Censorship Collection, an online archive comprising more than one thousand marked-up copies of government-censored monographs and galley proofs from prewar Japan. All the digitized materials in this collection are currently available for viewing onsite, …
Posted in: Asian Division, Digital Content, East Asia