The Asian Division has an on-going effort, in cooperation with the Library’s digitization initiative and external partners, to digitize select items from its collections of high research value. Many items in the digital collections are rare materials, some of which are the most valuable titles and editions dating back to the 11th or 12th century and are the only extant copies in the world. Also included are contemporary materials in the public domain that cover all manner of topics and offer insights into the study of multiple facets of Asian countries and peoples.
Digital Collections
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CollectionAinu and Ezochi Rare Collection This collection of rare materials brings together books, manuscripts, and maps produced during the 18th and 19th centuries that document Japanese exploration and observation of the island and prefecture now known as Hokkaido in Japan, as well as Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in Russia. For several centuries these areas were inhabited primarily by Ainu peoples, who shared closely related languages, traditions, and modes…Collection Items: View 92 Items
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CollectionChinese Rare Book Digital Collection The Chinese Rare Book Digital Collection draws from the 5,300 titles of Chinese rare books housed at the Asian Division of the Library of Congress. The online presentation includes nearly 2,000 digitized rare titles.Collection Items: View 1,990 Items
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CollectionJapanese Censorship Collection The Japanese Censorship Collection contains 1,327 marked-up copies of censored monographs and galley proofs for approximately 1,100 titles, mostly from the 1920s and 1930s. They include copies submitted by publishers for examination by censors in the Home Ministry of the Japanese imperial government as well as books lawfully confiscated by the ministry and local authorities for censor review. The practice of censorship were carried…Collection Items: View 261 Items
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CollectionJapanese Rare Book Digital Collection The Japanese Rare Book Digital Collection features materials from the Asian Division at the Library of Congress. The division’s Japanese Rare Book Collection comprises some 6,000 titles that span diverse genres and cover all manner of subjects. The vast majority of these items are books, but the collection also includes atlases, manuscripts, scrolls, and three-dimensional objects. In principle, the rare book designation for Japanese…- Date: 1942
Collection Items: View 38 Items
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CollectionKorean Rare Book Digital Collection The digital collection draws from the 654 titles in the Korean Rare Book Collection housed in the Asian Division of the Library of Congress. The initial online presentation includes 11 digitized rare titles.Collection Items: View 88 Items
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CollectionMangyan bamboo collection from Mindoro, Philippines, circa 1900-1939 The Southeast Asian Rare Book Collection counts among its most unique items a collection of 71 bamboo slats and 6 cylinders from the island of Mindoro in the Philippines. These items are etched with either verse or prose in the Mangyan script—an Indic-derived writing system that pre-dates the arrival of the Spaniards in the Philippines and persists to the present. They make up the…- Contributor: Sikadan - Maliwanag, Ildefonso - Southeast Asian Rare Book Collection (Library of Congress) - Luyon - Gardner, Fletcher
Collection Items: View 82 Items
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CollectionNorth Korean Serials This digital collection presented here makes some of the most sought-after materials in the Library’s North Korean collection available for free. The North Korean Serials digital collection at the Library of Congress continues to expand, with newly digitized content added each month. Once the project is completed in 2024, it will encompass some 320 serial titles and 14,100 issues.Collection Items: View 5,424 Items
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CollectionPacific Encounters in Nineteenth-Century Japan This digital collection features rare materials at the Library of Congress that document early Japanese interactions with the United States and countries in Europe, namely Britain, France, Netherlands, and Russia.Collection Items: View 28 Items
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CollectionSelections from the Naxi Manuscript Collection The Library of Congress’s collection of 2,780 Naxi (Nashi) manuscripts is the largest collection outside of China and is considered the finest in the world—unrivaled in quality, quantity, and variety among Naxi collections in Europe, the People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan.Collection Items: View 25 Items
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CollectionSouth Asian Digital Collection The South Asian Digital Collection features selected books, serials, and manuscripts related to the present-day countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. All items in this digital collection are freely accessible online. This digital collection includes items in South Asian languages (e.g., Bengali, Hindi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Urdu) as well as items relevant to South Asia in English, French, German,…Collection Items: View 903 Items
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CollectionTibetan Oral History Archive Project The Tibetan Oral History and Archive Project (TOHAP) is a digital online web archive of oral history interviews in Tibetan and Chinese with accompanying written transcripts (in English) that documents the social and political history of modern Tibet. The interview tapes can be listened to simultaneous with reading the transcripts. The translations were made in a literal style to retain a flavor of the…Collection Items: View 795 Items
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CollectionWilliam Farquhar Correspondence The Southeast Asian Rare Book Collection of the Asian Division of the Library of Congress has a unique and important collection of forty-six Malay letters written in the Jawi script—an adaptation of the Arabic script for writing the Malay language. This correspondence is mainly from Malay kings and notables to William Farquhar (1744-1839), a key figure in the founding of modern Singapore. William Farquhar…Collection Items: View 3 Items
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CollectionWilliam Speiden Journals As purser’s clerk aboard the U.S. steam frigate Mississippi, William Speiden, Jr., (1835-1920) created a two-volume journal dating from 1852 to 1855 documenting the U.S. Naval Expedition to the China Seas and Japan under the command of Commodore Matthew C. Perry.- Contributor: Speiden, William
Collection Items: View 16 Items
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CollectionWorld Digital Library This collection contains cultural heritage materials gathered during the World Digital Library (WDL) project, including thousands of items contributed by partner organizations worldwide as well as content from Library of Congress collections. The original World Digital Library site (preserved in LC’s Web Archives here) and all descriptive metadata were translated from English and made available in six additional languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Russian,…Collection Items: View 19,407 Items
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CollectionYongle Da Dian The Yongle da dian 永樂大典, or Yongle Encyclopedia, stands out as one of the most extensive attempts in world history to capture the entirety of human knowledge in book form. The 41 volumes digitized here represent the complete holdings for this title in the Asian Division of the Library of Congress. Although this number may represent only a small fraction of the whole encyclopedia,…Collection Items: View 43 Items