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Current Status of East Asian Collections in American Libraries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
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This study of the East Asian collections in American libraries in 1975 provides new data on the current status of resources, growth rate, geographical distribution, acquisitions, cataloging, personnel, fiscal support, unit capabilities and cost, use patterns, and services. The analysis is based on information from ninety-three libraries, including twenty-two not previously reported.
Of the collections in this survey, eighty-nine are located in the United States, three in Canada, and one in Mexico. About one-half of them were established before, the other half since, 1960 (Table 1). Sixty-six of the collections are in university and college libraries, six in federal libraries, seven in public libraries, and fourteen in museum and special libraries. The size of the collections varies from a few thousand to as many as over a million volumes—with 11 having over 200,000 volumes; 5 between 100,000 and 200,000 volumes; 43 between 10,000 and 100,000 volumes; and 34 under 10,000 volumes. The incorporation of East Asian materials in branches of public libraries is a new trend, primarily for providing materials in vernacular languages to minority groups in the local community.
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- Research Notes
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1977
References
1 This project was cosponsored by the Committee onEast Asian Libraries of the Association for Asian Studies and the ACLS-SSRC Task Force on (Chinese) Libraries and Research Materials, and supported by a grant of the American Council of Learned Societies and Social Science Research Council, The author wishes to acknowledge with gratitude the technical advice of Professor William L. Parish, Jr. and the research assistance of Mr. James K. M. Cheng in the preparation of this report.
2 The full report—including an introduction, 12 tables, 4 appendixes, a directory of East Asian Collections in American libraries, and an index—is published by the Center for Chinese Research Materials of the Association of Research Libraries, Washington, D.C., 1976. For previous surveys, see note under Table 2.
3 Besides those included in the tabulation, a few other public libraries (including the Boston Public Library, California State Library, Hawaii State Library, Oakland Public Library, San Francisco Public Library, Toronto Public Library, and that in Washington, D.C.) are known to possess some materials i n East Asian languages.
4 See catalogs and other publications of individual collections in the Library Quarterly, XXIX (1959), pp. 40–42; and supplements in the full report, Appendix C, pp. 49–57.
5 Based on the membership breakdown in the Asian Studies Professional Review, IV (1974–75), PP. 72–74.
6 The collection at El Colegio de Mexico is included in the tabulation; that of the Universidade de Sāo Paulo in Brazil, which possessed 12,210 volumes in Japanese in September 1976, is not represented.
7 See my Present Status and Personnel Needs of Far Eastern Collections in America: A Report for the Committeeon American Library Resources on the Far East of the Association for Asian Studies (Washington, D.C., 1964)Google Scholar; see also Tsien, T. H. and Winger, Howard W. (eds.), Area Studies and the Library (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 68–71.Google Scholar
8 The total expenditure for the 22 collections not included in theprevious surveys were $1,983,103, or 5% of the total; thus the true total of increase was 61%.
9 See my “East Asian Library Resources in America: A New Survey,’ AAS Newsletter, XVI, 3 (1971), pp. I–II.Google Scholar
10 American Council on Education, Library Services in Support of International Education (Washington, D.C., 1974), pp. 8–9.Google Scholar
11 Mote, Frederick W., “Library Skills in the Chinese Field,” CEAL Newsletter, No. 47 (1975), pp. 75–76.Google Scholar
12 For qualifications and problems, see my “Education for East Asian Librarianship,” in Bishop, Enid and Waller, Jean M. (eds.), Intellectual Cooperation in Oriental Librarianship (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1972), pp. 108–15.Google Scholar