Harvard-Yenching Library Receives Comprehensive Chinese Database

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December 16, 1999

SEARCH THE GAZETTE

HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Victor Fung, chairman of Prudential Asia and of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, and Gabriel Yu, chairman of Italade Enterprises Ltd. and owner of Digital Heritage Co. of Hong Kong, have donated a copy of the Siku Quanshu Electronic Database and site license to the Harvard-Yenching Library.

Fung, who earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1971, is also a former faculty member of the Harvard Business School.

The Siku Quanshu is the most comprehensive encyclopedia of Chinese scholarship from antiquity to the 18th century. The Siku Quanshu, or Complete Library in Four Branches of Literature, was compiled between 1773 and 1782 under the edict of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty (1644—1912). It contains more than 3,460 works with a total of more than 36,000 volumes. Its contents cover a wide range of subjects, including the classics, history, literature, philosophy, geography, politics, rules and regulations, economics, society, astronomy, science, technology, and medicine. Only the best works representing the 5,000 years of Chinese culture and civilization were selected for inclusion of this gigantic compilation.

Seven copies of the Siku Quanshu, all written by hand, were originally created. As a result of the Boxer Rebellion and the civil wars in China, only two complete sets of the original copies exist today: one in the National Palace Museum in Taiwan and the other in the National Library of China in Beijing.

The Commercial Press of Taiwan reprinted the copy in the National Palace Museum in Taiwan about 20 years ago. It is known as the Wenyuange edition. The Harvard-Yenching Library at Harvard has a complete set of this reprint edition in 400 volumes.

The Siku Quanshu Electronic Database (Wenyuange edition), developed by Digital Heritage in Hong Kong, is a full-text retrieval system that includes the texts of the entire Siku Collection with a very powerful search engine on 175 disks. It is by far the most comprehensive and versatile LAN-based electronic database for the Siku Collection. The development of this electronic database engaged more than 100 technicians and editors from Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.

This electronic database is a significant contribution to scholarship. It provides full-text retrieval functions of the 800 million Chinese characters in the Siku Collection. Special features include searches by title, author, caption title, special indices, subject divisions, name and dynasty of the author, special reference tools, bookmarking and note taking. With a variety of search methods, the database provides scholars with an easy, fast, and convenient search of the large amount of texts among specific chapters of specific volumes in the Siku Collection.

Harvard-Yenching Library, a unit of the Harvard College Library, has the most extensive academic research collection of East Asian materials outside of Asia.