Includes bibliographical references (pages 419-420) and index.

Cover image
Title page
Table of Contents
Series Page
Copyright
List of Interviewees
Authors’ Biographies
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Inside the Vatican Apostolic Library
2. A Library of the Venice and the Giorgio Cini Foundation’s Far East Centre for Comparative Studies of Cultures and Spiritualities
3. From the Shang to the Qing at the British Library
4. A Combined Library, Archive, and Museum – Exploring the British Library
5. How Popular Books From Ancient China Were Rescued by Sir Thomas Bodley: A Tale of the Bodleian Library, Oxford University
6. Preserving the Ewenki and Orochen People at the University of Cambridge
7. Worldwide and Cost-Free Access to the Geographically Scattered Materials From Dunhuang and Other Sites in Chinese Central Asia
8. Propaganda Art as a Powerful Weapon for Promoting Nationalism, Patriotism and Hatred Towards the Enemy
9. There’s No Other Way but to Use the Berlin State Library
10. Opening up the Bavarian State Library’s East Asian Collections to the World
11. A History That Dates Back to the 13th Century in Switzerland’s Zurich Central Library
12. Collecting Asia at the Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
13. Documenting the Cultural Exchange of Czechoslovak–Chinese Relations
14. From Collection Building to Web Development and Network Building in the Nordic Asian Studies Community
15. A Royal Library That Is Open to Everyone in Denmark and Worldwide
16. Exploring the Hidden Treasures
17. The Most Royal of Museums in Belgium
18. A Unique Chinese Collection for the General Public at the Lyon Public Library in France
19. The Kingdom of Naxi Manuscript Collections at the French School of the Far East
20. A Library That Reflects the History of French Interest in China and East Asia
21. The Most Comprehensive Collection of Asian Art at the Guimet Museum (National Museum of Asian Art), Paris
22. Collecting the Orient and Eastern Collections at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (National Library of France)
23. The Knowledge of Digital Archives and History in Japan
24. A Contemporary Russian Museum Combining the Traditions of Ethnography and Western Anthropology
25. Imperial China’s Collections at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan
26. Witnessing the Birth of Asian Hollywood Through the Hong Kong Film Archive
27. Documenting Traditional Chinese Medicine Library Collections at Hong Kong Baptist University
28. The Politics Behind the Olympics and Sports Intelligence
29. Asia Art Archive: Archiving Contemporary Art in Asia as Practice
30. Archiving and Annotating Hong Kong Chinese Martial Arts as a Living Archive
31. Establishing a Permanent Kung Fu Museum in Hong Kong
32. There Is No Truth: There Are Only Stories
33. The Legend Continues: How Bruce Lee’s Legacy Contributes to Our Shared Understanding of Libraries, Archives and Museums
34. Collecting Memories of Hong Kong in the Canadian Context
35. The Rise of the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, University of California, Berkeley
36. The Birth and Creation of a Leading Collection of Asian Materials at Princeton University
Bringing It All Together
Bibliography
Index

Inside the World’s Major East Asian Collections examines the rise of the “LAM,” an acronym that stands for libraries, archives and museums. In doing so, this book profiles leading experts—librarians, archivists and museum curators—who specialise in East Asian collections from across the world. In examining the dynamically shifting role of the cultural institution in the context of managing information and collections, this book provides important themes offered by these cultural experts in understanding the necessary professional skills, knowledge and personalities that are required for working in such environments of varying size, scope and composition in LAMs. As galleries, LAMs manage preservation and access of history and culture, and their missions and goals as cultural institutions continue to converge.

As collecting institutions, LAMs share the common mandate to preserve and make accessible primary resources valuable for researchers and professionals, as well as the public. LAMs are mostly publicly funded, publicly accountable institutions collecting cultural heritage materials. Another aim of this book is to enhance the visibility and recognise the efforts of the LAM professionals as cultural institution leaders, since much of their great contributions in the respective fields to preserving our cultural and documentary heritages have gone unnoticed outside their parent institutions.