The National Central Library of Taiwan has (NCL). CompletedIn collaboration with Stanford University and Oxford University libraries, the digitisation over 30,000 pages from rare Chinese books. The collaboration with Stanford University Libraries focuses primarily on digitizing a selection ancient Chinese books and documents. This includes Confucian classics and documents from history, philosophy, and literature.
Digital Production Group (DPG), a digitalization company, digitized 210 volumes from 26 titles held in the East Asia Library and Bowes Art & Architecture Library. The digitized volumes were then delivered to NCL in November for its Rare Books Database.
Scholars working on Ming Qing period scholarship, literature, and history will find these rare books very useful. According to the NCL statement, the collaborative digitization project with the Bodleian library, the main research library at the University of Oxford, includes a valuable collection of ancient Chinese manuscripts and books.
To replenish Taiwan’s resources for Chinese studies, the national central library has focused on digitising rare books in the collections of libraries abroad by coordinating with foreign libraries. The library has created a bilaterally-beneficial international coordination model that allows it to access rare books and documents from abroad. The library has digitized over 3.2 million pages in 4,700 types of important rare Chinese books since the international digitisation.
Tseng Shu-hsien, Director General, NCL
NCL began a collaboration in 2005 with the Library of Congress of the United States. Since then, NCL has collaborated with many major libraries and institutions around the world, including the University of Washington Libraries, the Library of the University of California at Berkeley, and Princeton University Library to digitize rare Chinese books and documents within their collections as part of the international digitisation program. NCL also has cooperation ties to the University of Toronto Libraries and the University British Columbia Library.
These books, which were printed using traditional woodblock printing techniques, are valuable pre-modern Chinese resources. Professor Ronald Egan is an expert in Chinese premodern literature. CommentThey can be found in a variety of fields and subjects, including local gazetteers, scholarly Chinese classics and historiography studies, historical phonology and literary collections, as well as anecdotal and anecdotal works.
This was the first mass digitization project to be imaged using equipment DPG recently purchased from Digital Transitions, the BC100 Dual Copy System. The BC100 book capture system uses two overhead cameras, a pneumatic platen, and a book crane to create FADGI 4-star quality images at high production rates.
Production was scheduled to begin in May 2020. The international collaboration aimed to provide an accurate estimate of the time it would take to digitize the requested books. The team was able deliver 33,613 more pages than expected, exceeding the original agreement.
OpenGov Asia reported that Taiwan is one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies. It has seen rapid industrialisation and increased exports in recent years. This has allowed it to sustain a high-growth economy. In Taiwan, the digital market is also growing.
The National Digital Archives Program and National Science and Technology Program to e-Learning allow for the digitization of various archives. These include the National Palace Museum, National Taiwan University, and many other cultural institutions. These two Taiwanese programmes have successfully integrated different fields of science and economy into one program.
