National Library of China Embarks on Digitization Project

Browsable, digitalized collection means more books, less damage at the NLC.

    The National Library of China (NLC) and the Harvard University Library have signed an agreement on digitizing rare ancient Chinese books in the collection of the Harvard-Yenching Library, beginning in January 2010.

    Once completed, the project will reduce damaging physical contact with the original books while actually increasing researcher's access to the material. All the digitized books will be freely available to scholars worldwide on the NLC website.

    Harvard-Yenching is the largest university library for East Asian research in the Western world. It is expected the project will have a transformative effect on scholarship involving rare ancient Chinese texts.