Chinese Rare Books

The East Asian Library holds 43 Song and Yuan editions in 366 volumes—the largest collection of Song and Yuan printing in North America. It also holds 15 draft manuscripts and 43 handwritten copies of works on a variety of topics, dating from the Song into the Qing dynasties. Among the other volumes in the collection are examples of Ming commercial printing, early movable type printing, and imperial printing. Researchers wanting an overview of the collection are referred to Bokelai Jia Zhou da xue Dong Ya tu shu guan Zhong wen gu ji shan ben shu zhi 柏克萊加州大学東亞圖書館中文古籍善本書志, in the East Asian Library’s reference collection. Individual items in the collection can also be located by title, author, keyword though OskiCat. 446 of the 802 Chinese rare books published before 1795 and 468 pre-1912 Chinese publications have been digitized, and are available from library's Digital Collections.