Chinese Studies : Ancient Resources

Comprehensive Resources 

• new China Comprehensive Gazetteers (中國綜合方志庫) (NetID required)
  The collection encompasses over 6,500 titles, providing a holistic view of China's diverse regions and tracing its rich history from the Northern Sung Dynasty to the inception of the People's Republic of China.
   
• Chinese Rare Books: Harvard Library
  The Harvard Library digitalized over 9,600 items of Chinese rare books in the collection and opened them to access.
   
• Database of Chinese Local Records I-III (中國方志庫 I-III) (NetID required)
  It contains from Volume I to Volume III from Erudition (爱如生) with more than 10,000 local gazetteers from the Song Dynasty to the Republican era. It is comprised of more than 10 million pages of images and texts and is fully searchable by various methods, including region, title, period, or classification. Due to the limited number of users for the database, please log out when done in order to allow others access to the database without delay.
   
• Diaolong Full-text Database of Chinese & Japanese Ancient Books (雕龍: 中日古籍全文資料庫) (NetID required)
  Full texts of ancient Chinese and Japanese books. The database provides the Dao zang 道藏, Dao zang ji yao 道藏辑要, Si bu cong kan 四部叢刊, Yongle da dian 永樂大典, Gu jin tu shu ji cheng 古今圖書集成, Si ku quan shu 四庫全書, and various local gazetteers. Access is limited to 5 simultaneous users.
   
• Discovery System (古籍发现系统)
  The platform covers around 150,000 titles of full-text ancient books and other partial copies.
   
• Dunhuang Documents Database (敦煌遺書数据库) 
  The open-access database provides the digitalized Dunhuang documents. The search page has the default username and password.
   
• East Asia Digital Library (EADL)
  The digital library collaboratively developed the National Library of Korea (NLK) and the National Diet Library of Japan (NDL). It consists of ancient books and other resources. These resources are multiple languages, in particular Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
   
• new Grand secretariat archives (內閣大庫檔案) (NetID required)
  Collection of materials from the Ming and Qing dynasties includes imperial decrees, edicts, memorials, tribute documents, examination papers, and documents from the offices of the Grand Secretariat.
   
• National Palace Museum Library (國立故宮博物院: 圖書文獻館)
  The online library provides the digitalized resources from the museum collection of 善本古籍全文影像資料庫, 清代宮中檔案奏摺及軍機處檔摺件全文影像資料庫, 清代文獻檔冊全文影像資料庫, 家族譜牒文獻資料庫, 明清輿圖全文影像資料庫, and 故宮文物月刊, 學術季刊資料庫. Registration is required. 
   
• 國學大師
  The open-access resource provides over 20,000 sorts of classical texts with photocopies and some with optical character recognition (OCR). A part of the text is searchable. It also consists of 60 dictionaries in Chinese. 
   
• Ming Qing Women's Writings
  This digital collection showcases the literary works of women during the late imperial era in China, spanning the years from 1368 to 1911. The platform comprises a virtual library, enriched by the digital scholarly tools meticulously crafted by the McGill Library Digital Initiatives team. Furthermore, it includes direct links to individual authors' profiles within the China Biographical Database, hosted by Harvard University.
   
• Scripta Sinica (漢籍: 電子文獻資料庫) (NetID required)
  It is a collection of about 430 full-text Chinese pre-modern works in all subject areas. The digital resource provides the categories of Jing 經, Shi 史, Zi 子, Ji 集. Please select "授權使用" when accessing the front page.
   
• The Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica (中央研究院歷史語言研究所)
  The Institute of History and Philology offers various databases related to the Chinese classical text and others. Some of the databases have linked with The Institute of History and Philology's Project to Digitally Innovate Academic Settings (史語所學術創新數位深耕計劃).
   
• The Institute of History and Philology's Project to Digitally Innovate Academic Settings (史語所學術創新數位深耕計劃)
  The Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica 中央研究院歷史語言研究所 provides full open digital resources with the following databases:
  
  明實錄、朝鮮王朝實錄、清實錄資料庫
  Archaeodata (考古資料數位典藏資料庫)
  Digital Archive of Bronze Rubbings (青銅器拓片數位典藏)
  Digital Archive of Oracle Bones Rubbings (甲骨文數位典藏)
  Digital Archive Project For The Liao-Chin-Yuan Rubbings (遼金元拓片資料庫)
  Digital Archives of Bronze Images and Inscriptions (殷周金文暨青銅器資料庫)
  清代職官資料庫
   
• Siku Quanshu Wenyuange Edition (文淵閣四庫全書) (NetID required)
  Si ku quan shu 四庫全書 is one of the largest collections of literary works from China. The electronic version provides easy access to and navigation through this encyclopedic collection compiled between 1773 and 1782. It includes 3,460 works, totaling over 36,000 scrolls, and approximately 800 million characters. Users can search by original catalog, concise catalog, author, and full-text.
   
• 上图古籍 (上海图书馆藏古籍选览)
  It contains 472 titles of ancient books collected in the Shanghai Library. No OCR supported.
   
• 书格
  It includes mainly high-definition color image version PDF format. Most books have a single page width of more than 1400 pixels and more than 2400 pixels. The books' publication dates range from Song to Qing Dynasties.
   
• Universal Type Digital Humanities Research Platform on Chinese Ancient Books (通用型古籍數位人文研究平台)
  The text of the database is based on the special collection of Ming Dynasty in National Central Library (NCL 國家圖書館). This platform also provides digital analyzing tools.
   
• The First Historical Archives of China (中國第一歷史檔案館)
  The digital archives include multiple historical resources of official records in Qing Dynasty. The latest database of Qing hui dian 清会典 and Qing shi lu 清实录 is available to access with optical character recognition (OCR):   
  Qing hui dian 清會典, Qing shi lu 清實錄.
   
• 中國哲學書電子化計劃
  The open-access resource has collected over 30,000 titles of ancient Chinese books, especially on the classical texts in the pre-Qin and Han Dynasties. It provides photocopies with optical character recognition (OCR) support.
   
• 中華大典數據庫: 文獻目錄典
  The database is the digitalized Zhong hua da dian 中華大典. It provides the reference materials of 类书. There are two categories in the database: Zhong hua da dian 中華大典 and its supplement Wen xian mu lu dian 文獻目錄典. Registration is required. 
   
• 中华古籍资源库
  The open-access digital resource is a part of 中国古籍保护网 from National Library of China (中国国家图书馆). It contains over 20,000 titles of ancient books and over 6,000 titles of local gazettes.