KU Libraries

Bibliographer's Statement

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Purpose of Exhibition

The purpose of the 2012 East Asian Studies exhibition is to showcase the outcomes of East Asian scholarship at the University of Kansas and to highlight the use of East Asian collection materials as part of the research process. The exhibition also aims to share and celebrate the research and scholarly achievements of East Asian Studies faculty with fellow researchers and the community.

East Asian Library Collection at the University of Kansas

In 1959 the University of Kansas established the Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS) and its programs with a federal grant.  In 1965 the University of Kansas Libraries established the East Asian Library (EAL) to facilitate acquisition, processing, and user services for East Asian materials.  For fifty years, the EAL collection has supported the teaching and research goals of the CEAS at the University of Kansas and the mid-America region. It is part of the International Area Studies at the University of Kansas Libraries.

The KU CEAS includes about 70 core and associate faculty in the humanities, social sciences, and professional schools. The East Asian collection supports the East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALC) B.A. and M.A. programs, and M.A. and doctoral programs with an East Asian concentration in many departments and professional schools. New joint degree programs have been added such as the MBA/MA and JD/MA in EALC, and the Graduate Licensure Program in the School of Education.

The East Asian collection is among the top 20 collections in North America, and 10th among public funded collections in the U.S.  As of June 2011, the total holdings of the East Asian collection consisted of approximately 310,000 volumes including ebooks, with 165,000 Chinese, 87,000 Japanese, and 6,000 Korean and over 50,000 books in English and other languages. In addition, there are several thousand microforms, over one thousand multi-media items. The library subscribes to core electronic resources of full-text academic journals, newspapers, ebooks, bibliography and indexes, statistics and census, encyclopedia, dictionaries, and legal studies databases. Furthermore, the East Asian languages collection is supported by western language materials on East Asia studies housed in the general library collection in a wide spectrum of fields.  The East Asian Studies librarians collaborate with subject bibliographers in acquiring Western language materials that are not covered by standard approval plans.

The Chinese collection provides broad coverage of history, art history, language and literature, philosophy and religion, and resources for social science study of the modern period.  It is particularly strong in Yuan, Ming, and Qing paintings, Ming and Qing gazetteers and literati works, Buddhism of the pre-modern period, early China Republican period (1912-1949) history, the social and economic conditions of post Cultural Revolution China (1975-present), and the cultural history of modern China.  The Japanese collection is strong in Japanese art, modern Japanese history, and literature of the medieval Heian period of classical writings, and in 20th century literature, films, and pop cultures.  The Japanese art history collection has a large number of  paintings from the medieval period to the pre-modern period.  The library also has an extensive collection of Edo (Tokugawa) period (1600-1868) paintings and Ukiyoe woodblock prints.  The Korean language collection has been growing since 1996 after a long break starting in the 1960s.  It consists of core reference works, art history, classical literature, and cultural and historical materials.

As a National Resource Center library, the East Asian collection also supports mid-America K-12 teaching and study of East Asia. The Library hosts travel grants for scholars from the mid-America region whose home institutions do not have substantial East Asian studies resources. The Chinese and Korean studies Librarian, and the Japanese studies Librarian are responsible for collection development, user services, outreach, and liaison with the Center for East Asian Studies. Librarians create online library guides, provide library tours, instruction, and research consultation for individuals, groups, and curriculum use. They are CEAS faculty and serve on the Center’s Library Faculty Committee on collection development, travel grants, and programming issues.  For more information, please visit the East Asian Library guides at http://guides.lib.ku.edu/eastasia.