Cataloging, Preserving, and Digitizing Chinese Rare Books

FAIN: PW-50133-08

New York Public Library (New York, NY 10016-0109)
John Lundquist (Project Director: July 2007 to September 2009)
Michael R. Inman (Project Director: September 2009 to August 2013)

Cataloging of 1,500 volumes of Chinese rare books of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with conservation treatment and digitization of 93 volumes.

The New York Public Library requests $345,800 in funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to completely catalog and partially preserve and digitize materials in the Chinese Rare Book Collection. This two-year project will make accessible a collection of materials that will provide a large community of scholars with important primary sources relating to Chinese modern history, translation, Confucian theory through time, as well as Buddhist and Christian beliefs, the Chinese classics, and Chinese art, among other topics. The materials that will undergo preservation and digitization are those deemed to be most historically and artifactually significant titles in the collection. The project will catalog 1,000 Chinese rare books, totaling 1,500 volumes and will preserve and digitize 6 titles, totaling 93 volumes and 8,700 spreads.

Associated Products

Digitized Chinese Rare Books from the James Legge Collection at The New York Public Library (Web Resource)
Title: Digitized Chinese Rare Books from the James Legge Collection at The New York Public Library
Author: The New York Public Library
Abstract: This digital presentation offers a glimpse into The New York Public Library's (NYPL) James Legge Collection of rare Chinese books. This collection of 230 titles, amassed by noted nineteenth-century missionary-scholar James Legge (1815-1897), was acquired by the Library in 1909, at which time it formed the basis of the NYPL's Chinese language rare book collection. As part of a NEH-funded project to catalog the Library's collections of rare Chinese books and make them more accessible, six titles from the Legge Collection were digitized and are available here via NYPL’s Digital Gallery.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=all&col_id=722
Primary URL Description: Collection Guide on NYPL Digital Gallery for six titles from the James Legge Collection.

Chinese Rare Books from the James Legge Collection at The New York Public Library (Web Resource)
Title: Chinese Rare Books from the James Legge Collection at The New York Public Library
Author: The New York Public Library
Abstract: This digital presentation offers a glimpse into The New York Public Library's (NYPL) James Legge Collection of rare Chinese books. This collection of 230 titles, amassed by noted nineteenth-century missionary-scholar James Legge (1815-1897), was acquired by the Library in 1909, at which time it formed the basis of the NYPL's Chinese language rare book collection. As part of a NEH-funded project to catalog the Library's collections of rare Chinese books and make them more accessible, six titles from the Legge Collection were digitized and are available via NYPL’s Digital Gallery.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=all&col_id=722
Primary URL Description: Collection Guide on NYPL's Digital Gallery for six digitized titles from the James Legge Collection.

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