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East Asia Library acquires several large new Western-language databases

The East Asia Library has recently purchased several important database collections of Western-language historical materials that are now available for Stanford users to access.  These databases include documents digitized from collections held at the British Library, the Second Historical Archives of China, and a number of other libraries and archives. China and the Modern World - Formerly called China from Empire to Republic, this is a series of digital archive collections sourced from preeminent libraries and archives across the world, including the Second Historical Archives of China and the British Library.  It contains two prominent collections: Missionary, sinology, and literary periodicals: A collection of 17 English-language periodicals published in, or about, China during a period of over 130 years, extending from 1817 until 1949 when the People's Republic of China was founded. This corresponds to the periods of the late Qing Dynasty and the Republican Era (1911-1949), when China experienced radical and often traumatic transformations from an inward-looking imperial dynasty into a globally engaged republic with modern approaches to politics, literature, education, public morality, and intellectual life. Records of the Maritime Customs Service of China: This collection provides primary source material for the study of China and its relations with the West in the late Qing and Republican periods. The records in this collection, including official correspondence, dispatches, reports, memoranda, and private and confidential letters, offer evidence of Chinese life, the economy and politics through the Taiping Rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion, the Revolution of 1911, the May 30 Movement, the two Sino-Japanese Wars, and the Chinese Civil War. China, America, and the Pacific - China, America and the Pacific explores the cultural and trading relationships that emerged between America, China and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Sourced from twelve North American libraries that include the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum and the Massachusetts Historical Society, China, America and the Pacific offers unique insights into the history of North American trade. Coverage includes the Old China Trade, the Pacific Northwest fur trade, the whaling industry and the development of Pacific trading centres such as Hawaii. Manuscripts, rare printed sources, visual images, objects and maps from international libraries and archives document this fascinating history. China: Culture and Society - The core of China: Culture and Society is the pamphlets held in the Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia housed in the Carl A. Kroch Library of Cornell University. Mostly in English and published between c. 1750 and 1929, and amounting to around 1,200 items in 220 bound volumes. The pamphlets have all been digitised in colour and are full-text searchable. Types of material in the collection include: addresses and speeches, annual reports, assessments, catalogues, essays, examinations, guides and manuals, inquiries and studies, journals, lecture notes, letters, magazine articles, minutes of meetings, notes and records. Foreign Office Files for Japan - Provides full-text searchable access to formerly restricted top level discussions and correspondence from the British Embassy and consulate in Japan. Includes memoranda, reports, minute sheets and correspondence, along with detailed assessments of key events, speeches and topics of special interest. Includes Japan-specific files from the FO 371 and FO 262 series and is supplemented by files from the Western and American Department papers in FO 371. Meiji Japan - Edward Sylvester Morse Papers were given to the Peabody Museum in 1926 and consist of 99 boxes of personal and professional papers including diaries, correspondence, research files, drawings, lecture notes, publications, scrapbooks and manuscripts. Collection digitized in its entirety. Papers (ca. 1858-1925, 40 cubic feet), document the numerous and valuable contributions made by Morse to the areas of malacology, zoology, ethnology, archaeology and art history. Included are diaries, scrapbooks, correspondence, research files, drawings, manuscripts, publications and teaching materials and drawings. Several other recently purchased database collections also contain material related to East Asia: Church Missionary Society Periodicals, Module 2: Medical Journals, Asian Missions and the Historical Record: 1816-1986 - Module II focuses on the publications of CMS medical mission auxiliaries, the work of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society among women in Asia and the Middle East, newsletters from native churches and student missions in China and Japan, and ‘home’ material including periodicals aimed at women and children subscribers. Learn about the Society’s role in vaccination programmes in Africa, campaigns against foot-binding in China and against child-marriage in India, and the effects of natural disasters, revolution, war and changing political regimes on Christian communities and Europeans far from home. Socialism on Film - Sourced from the British Film Institute (BFI), this collection of documentary, newsreel and feature films reveals the world as seen by Soviet, Chinese, Vietnamese, East European, and Latin American filmmakers. Ranging from the early 20th century to the 1980s, material encapsulates the themes of war, revolution, news, current affairs, culture and society. This project makes available the superb ETV-Plato Films collection put together by the British communist Stanley Forman in the years after the Second World War - produced almost exclusively in the communist world and then versioned into English for distribution in the West. The majority of the footage is previously unseen and provides an essential repository of research material for the study of key political and social events of the 20th century. Stanford librarians are happy to work with students, faculty, and other researchers who are interested in learning more about these resources, including providing training and consultation on integrating archive material into teaching and research.  Datasets for some of these resources are also available.  For more information, please contact Joshua Capitanio at the East Asia Library.

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Beautiful Books in the Stanford Digital Repository

Originally posted in ReMix: The Stanford University Libraries Newsletter Sixteen volumes selected from among the Libraries’ “beautiful books” were recently added – approximately 1,400 images in all – to the Stanford Digital Repository, where anyone cannow view Renaissance artistic visions of the fall of Troy, see the universe as Galileo showed it to hiscontemporaries, hear Dr. Johnson pitching his idea for the first serious English dictionary, and admire one of the last magnificent examples of the golden age of English fine printing just before WWII. As with all of Stanford’s rare and antiquarian books, the printed originals of these digitized volumes are cataloged inSearchWorks and can be requested for viewing in the Special Collections reading room. Now, via each item’s PURL (persistent uniform resource locator, which ensures that these materials are available from a single URL over the long term), researchers can work with digital as well as original printed editions. Scholars have discovered, though, that each has its own advantages and disadvantages, and often find it useful to consult both in their work. Rare books curator John Mustain, who selected items for the repository, explained the origin of the “beautiful books” designation: “In fact, the naming of this project was done without extensive thought and deliberation. The first book scanned, the 1483 edition ofPliny’s letters, was done before the beautiful books project (or its name) had been fully conceived. After the job was finished, a colleague, Stu Snydman (manager of digital production and web application development), told me that the Pliny was a beautiful book, and he suggested that we scan more such items, scan them as a formal project, books with marginalia (as the 1483 Pliny has), books with interesting provenance, books esteemed for their beauty. When I asked him what we would call the project, he answered without pause “Why not ‘beautiful books’?” In this way the project was launched and the name chosen.” There are many questions – some suggested by this digitization project itself – about the nature and beauty of books which could be posed here and about which our readers might debate. What makes a book beautiful? The Collection of Seventeen Greek and Latin texts, for example, is hardly attractive by conventional standards but is a splendid visual artifact, akin to archaeology, of Renaissance education. Does reading a work in a beautifully printed edition affect appreciation? Some collectors, for instance, read the works they collect in commoneditions in order to preserve their valuable copies in pristine or sometimes uncut condition. Is a first edition or a deluxe edition preferable to a Penguin paperback? Some readers prefer the portability and handling of paperbacks, and might even call them beautiful, especially their cover art. Can digital versions, which cannot be touched or smelled, adequately represent the beauty and antique qualities of early printed works? See further, on this question, the link in our News & Views section to anarticle on the bibliographic and social codes in printed books. Should we prefer an antiquarian copy as printed during or shortly after an author’s lifetime to a recent edition benefiting from textual criticism and scholarly annotation? I suppose that depends mainly on one’s purpose in reading. Finally, does illustration, since many equate “beautiful books” with “illustrated books,” enhance meaning in a literary work? Illustrations in post-mortem editions usually seem to represent the author’s intentions, but perhaps not always. Many other questions could surely be asked, if not answered, here. We can more easily agree, I imagine, that beautiful books are integral to the concept of culture; indeed, they are often said, particularly for the illustrated and illuminatedmanuscripts of the ancient and medieval periods, to best represent national cultures andaesthetic norms. These same manuscripts are often displayed in museum cases today and have retained their ability to touch lives, even of those who never read the works contained in them. Presented below, in chronological order, are digital offerings ranging from a 1490 incunabulum through a 1939 British fine press printing ofPervigilium Veneris (illustration, right), a fourth-century Latin poem celebrating the arrival of spring with its famously poignant refrain: Cras amet qui numquam amavit, quique amavit cras amet.Loveless hearts shall love to-morrow, hearts that have loved shall love once more. In the spirit of this poem (adapted for booklovers), please accept our invitation to enjoy one of these beautiful books. Selections from "Beautiful Books": Sphaera mundi, 1490, by Joannes Sacro Bosco (fl. 1230), with astronomical illustrations. Proverbia Senece, 1495, an alphabetical compilation of proverbial sayings (sententiae) from Seneca’s works.Historia Troiana, 1498, the fall of Troy in the Latin version attributed during the Middle Ages to Dares Phyrgius.Parthenice, 1499, Baptista Mantuanus’s life of Mary in epic language.In Robertum Seuerinatem panaegyricum Carmen, 1499, also by Baptista Mantuanus.Operetta del amore di Iesu, 1505, by Girolamo Savonarola.Collection of Seventeen Greek and Latin texts, 1543-1544, various portions of classical texts issued as pamphlets with wide margins and generous line spacing for use of students and heavily annotated throughout.Icones historiarum, 1547, containing Hans Holbein’s 94 woodcut illustrations of the Old Testament designed at roughly the same time as his 41 engravings of The Dance of Death.Sidereus nuncius, 1610, containing Galileo’s sketches of the moon and the first scientific treatise based on observations made through a telescope.A Collection of Emblemes, 1635, by George Wither, with 200 plates of emblems engraved by Crispin de Passe.Innocentia vindicata, 1695, by Celestino Sfondrati, with 46 full-page emblematic copperplates with devices within cartouches of various designs.Book of common prayer, 1717, Church of England, engraved throughout.Plan of a dictionary of the English language, 1747, by Samuel Johnson.Miseries of Human Life, 1809, by T. Rowlandson, from the “golden age of caricatures” (1780s-1830s).Characters in the grand fancy ball, 1828, with hand colored line engravings of costumes drawn from the works of Sir Walter Scott and Baron La Motte Fouqué.Pervigilium Veneris, 1939, one of 100 numbered copies with engravings by John Buckland-Wright and issued by the Golden Cockerel Press, side-by side Latin and English.  

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A diocesan map of the Church of England in Newfoundland and Labrador: showing the deaneries and missions

Scale [1:1,250,000] (W 65°30'--W 52°30'/N 61°15'--N46°20') Probably done by Joseph James Curling as preface on accompanying text (catalogued separa...

England and Wales ancient parishes, 1831

The system of Ancient Parishes was not defined by central government, but grew up over the centuries starting in Saxon times. By origin it was an e...

Ancient Parishes of England and Wales, 1831

The system of Ancient Parishes was not defined by central government, but grew up over the centuries starting in Saxon times. By origin it was an e...