„Chinese Ancient Books Resources Database” is an important achievement of “Chinese Ancient Books Preservation Plan”.
At present, ancient books photocopy resources published online include rare and ancient books collected by the National Library of China (NLC), the Zhaocheng Tripitaka of the Jin Dynasty, Dunhuang Manuscripts collected by the National Library of France (NLF), etc., totaling more than 10 million pages of more than 25000 volumes.
On 28 September 2016, “Chinese Ancient Books Resources Database” was launched officially, and photocopy resources of 10975 volumes of rare books and ancient books were published online; On 28 February 2017, photocopy resources of 6284 volumes of rare books and ancient books were published online; On 28 December 2017, 1281 volumes of Zhaocheng Tripitaka of the Jin Dynasty, and photocopy resources of 1928 volumes of rare books and ancient books were published online; On 5 March, 5300 pieces of Dunhuang Manuscripts collected by the NFC were published online
China made 6,786 sets of ancient books available online, bringing the total number of digitized ancient resources to 130,000, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported at the start of the year.
The uploaded resources, including copies of woodcuts from the Ming and Qing dynasties and ancient manuscripts, were published by the National Library of China in collaboration with five other libraries across the country.
The National Library of China has collected over 100,000 pieces of new and old photos (7,000 titles). These photos can trace back to the court photography of the end of the Qing Dynasty that photography was initially introduced to China. With the era of development and social improvement, photos of different periods vividly recorded the past social events, historical figures, the urban and the rural, attractions, architecture and clothing.
Other resources also available online:
Analytical System for the Complete Song Poetry
It includes 254,240 Song poems, providing full-text search, repeated poems search, poet bibliography search, and advanced search, and supporting strict data search and mixed-mode search. It has the functions of repeated poems extraction, metrical poems annotation, frequency statistics of words and phrases, and metrical analysis of users’ poems.
Chinese Genealogy Database
It has collected 1,124 titles of genealogies of Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. Each title is made according to the original copy of rare books, with all information reserved, including tables, diagrams, and marks.
