Ebooks (Chinese) and Dictionary
- 華藝線上圖書館 = Airiti Library.Publication in Taiwan platform, including Airiti iRead eBooks, Chinese Electronic Theses and Dissertation Service, Taiwan Electronic Periodical Services and National Palace Museum publications
- iRead eBook 華藝電子書Chinese books published in Taiwan including philosophy, religion, natural sciences, applied sciences, social sciences, history and geography, language and literature, and arts.
- Ainosco Search This link opens in a new window
Provides access to a full-text search across book content and full access to specific ebooks published in Taiwan, Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau.
- CNKI China Doctoral/Master Dissertations Full-text Database 中国博士学位论文全文数据库 This link opens in a new window
Dissertations and theses from major universities and institutions in mainland China.
- CNKI China Reference Works Online Database 中国工具書庫 This link opens in a new window
Chinese language reference works including dictionaries, encyclopedia, subject dictionaries, industry directories, and handbooks. Simplified Chinese Interface also available.
- Zhongguo ji ben gu ji ku 中國基本古籍庫 This link opens in a new window
Also known as Database of Chinese Classic Ancient Books: includes pre-20th century Chinese books covering all fields of knowledge from the pre-Qin dynasty to the Republican period. Allows a side-by-side comparison between the transcriptions and original page images
- Zhonghua jing dian gu ji ku | 中华经典古籍库 This link opens in a new window
This database contains the standard punctuated versions of many important Chinese classical texts in the fields of philosophy, history, and literature as published by Zhonghua Shuju and other major publishers of punctuated editions.
User Limit: 2 simultaneous users
Database Resources
Primary sources
- Archives Unbound This link opens in a new windowIncluding 295 collections. Many are Asian related. e.g. Chinese Maritime Customs Service: The Customs’ Gazette, 1869-1913, Shanghai Municipal Council: The Municipal Gazette, 1908-1940, Minutes of the Shanghai Municipal Council, etc.
- Chinese Newspapers Collection This link opens in a new window
Historical newspapers providing first-hand accounts and coverage of politics, society and events.
- Digital DunhuangVirtual representations and textual description of the contents of the Dunhuang caves.
- Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new windowIncluding 41 databases, e.g. China from Empire to Republic, Archives Unbound, etc
- International Dunhuang ProjectResource provides "information on tens of thousands of paintings, artefacts, textiles, manuscripts [from Silk Road archaeological sites, including Dunhuang], historical photographs and maps as well as cataloguing and contextual information" -- all freely accessible.
- Kanopy This link opens in a new windowOn-demand streaming video service for documentaries, training films, and theatrical releases. Films under a current license agreement are available for immediate viewing. Other films may require a request through the Kanopy site. Viewing films in a group forum is permitted as long as the viewing is by Vanderbilt authorized viewers only (current faculty, staff, or students) and it is not for commercial benefit (i.e. no admission costs are charged and no profit is made from the screening).
Secondary sources
- Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS) This link opens in a new windowIndex of books, journal articles, chapters in edited volumes, and conference proceedings on all subjects (especially the Humanities and Social Sciences) pertaining to the East, Southeast, and South Asia.
- Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Index of academic historical journals on the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, etc.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowLarge and important archive for academic journals, books, and primary sources in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Many journals do not have current issues.
- ProQuest This link opens in a new window
Search all ProQuest databases simultaneously. Includes arts, humanities, social sciences, news, and science and technology.
- HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
Digitized collections of some of the nation’s great research libraries, established in this repository to archive and share their digital content.
- CBETA (Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association)Chinese Buddhist texts, including editions of the Tripitaka. Includes an online reader and a lexicon tool, among other resources.
- China/Asia On Demand (CAOD) This link opens in a new windowIndex of core and university journals in business, economics, arts, humanities, law, politics, and social sciences.
- Chinese Local Gazetteers database = 中國方志庫 This link opens in a new window
Rare and special edition local gazetteers printed in China from ancient times to 1949. Included are gazetteers of jurisdictions, temples, mountains etc.
- Chinese Newspapers Collection This link opens in a new window
Historical newspapers providing first-hand accounts and coverage of politics, society and events.
- Chinese Periodical Full-text Database = 民国时期期刊全文数据库 (1911-1949)Covers about 20,000 titles of Chinese periodicals published in Republican era. Consists of 11 series.
- CNKI China Doctoral/Master Dissertations Full-text Database 中国博士学位论文全文数据库 This link opens in a new window
Dissertations and theses from major universities and institutions in mainland China.
- Database of Chinese Popular Literature = 中國俗文庫 This link opens in a new window
Popular literary works from the Qin-Han Dynasties to the early years of the Republic of China, including novel, script for story-telling, theatrical text, story song, storytelling in southern dialects, common saying story, rare books, and treasure volume.
- Diao long: Zhong Ri gu ji quan wen zi liao ku 雕龍 : 中日古籍全文資料庫. This link opens in a new window
A database consisting of sub-databases containing the full-text of more than 30,000 pre-modern works, chiefly in Chinese, with some Japanese titles. The sub-databases include works such as the Daoist classics, the Sibu congkan and Sibu beiyao, manuscripts from Dunhuang, the Siku quanshu, the Xuxiu Siku quanshu, banned books from the Siku quanshu, local gazeteers, Imperial examination papers, folk literature, books on pharmacology and medicine, and more.
- Digital library of Chinese Rare Books (古漢籍善本數位化資料庫)A collaborative digitization project, sponsored by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation which includes Chinese rare books from four libraries: the Library of Congress, Princeton University, Harvard University, and the Fu Ssu-Nien Library of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. Freely available.
- Down to the Countryside MovementDown to the Countryside Movement digital project at Dartmouth College contains 575 images plus some oral history.
- Duxiu (读秀) This link opens in a new window
Duxiu searches journals, newspapers, conference proceedings and books.
- Eastern Miscellany: Dong fang za zhi quan wen shu ju ku This link opens in a new window東方雜誌, covering 1904–1948,
- 抗日战争与近代中日关系文献 (Anti-Japanese War and Contemporary Sino-Japanese Relations Database) (open access)This freely accessible resource is funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China and developed by the National Library of China, the National Archives Administration of China, and the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It contains more than 5 million pages of various types of documents including manuscripts, books, periodicals, newspapers, photos, audio and video, and other formats of materials. Site available in Chinese language only. Scholars need to create an account (free) in order to download materials.
- Lao Shanghai dian ying hua bao.(老上海電影畫報)Movie Pictorials magazines of Old Shanghai collection provides access to more than a dozen Shanghai film publications from the 1920s and 1930s.
- Late Qing dynasty periodical full-text database = 晚清期刊全文数据库 (1833-1911)The Late Qing databases includes more than 300 journals (270,000 articles, approximately all those published).
- Modern History Database (MHDB)Integrated database the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. MHDB integrates the Institute's digital scholar resources from library, archive, Hu Shih memorial hall, databases found by MHDB team and interlibrary cooperation. Users can directly search keywords from this page and browse all related information.
- National Social Sciences Database = 国家哲学社会科学学术期刊数据库Thousands of academic Chinese social science and humanities journals, including those published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, had been pulled out of commercial databases are freely available in the National Social Sciences Database (国家哲学社会科学学术期刊数据库).
- Ren min ri bao (1946-) = People's daily (人民日報)All issues from 1946 of the Chinese national newspaper Ren min ri bao (People's Daily) until present are available on-line to Vanderbilt users.
- Scripta Sinica 漢籍全文資料庫 This link opens in a new window
Classic Chinese texts, especially those related to Chinese history. Part of the "Full-Text Chinese Records Database" (Han ji quan wen zi liao ku).
- Sinica SinoWeb = 經典人文學刊庫Sinological periodicals published in Taiwan (mostly from the Academia Sinica)
- Taiwan Journals Search = 臺湾人社百刊more than 250 academic journals from the humanities & social sciences published in Taiwan and continues to add new titles.
- Zhongguo ji ben gu ji ku 中國基本古籍庫 This link opens in a new window
Also known as Database of Chinese Classic Ancient Books: includes pre-20th century Chinese books covering all fields of knowledge from the pre-Qin dynasty to the Republican period. Allows a side-by-side comparison between the transcriptions and original page images
- Zhonghua jing dian gu ji ku | 中华经典古籍库 This link opens in a new window
This database contains the standard punctuated versions of many important Chinese classical texts in the fields of philosophy, history, and literature as published by Zhonghua Shuju and other major publishers of punctuated editions.
User Limit: 2 simultaneous users
- Zhong yang ri bao =Central Daily News (中央日報)Official newspaper of the Kuomintang and one of the world's oldest Chinese language newspaper since 1928.
- Zhong yang ri bao = 中央日報 (Shanghai)Part of Late Qing and Republican-Era Chinese Newspapers (1928-1948)
- China, America and the Pacific This link opens in a new windowManuscripts, rare printed sources, images, objects, and maps document the cultural and trading relationships that emerged between America, China, and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries.
- China and the Modern World This link opens in a new window
English-language monographs, manuscripts, periodicals, correspondence and letters, historical photos, ephemera, etc. on diplomacy/international relations, economy/trade, politics, Christianity, sinology, education, science and technology, imperialism, and globalization in China.
GALE Primary Sources: China and the Modern World including the following modules:
- China: Culture and Society This link opens in a new windowExtremely rare pamphlets from Cornell University Library’s Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia covering education, emigration, the foreign presence, missionaries, wars, rebellion, reform, opium, healthcare, and language.
- China: Trade, Politics and Culture 1793-1980 This link opens in a new windowEnglish-language original source material detailing China¹s interaction with the West. Provides insight into customs, events, and the monumental social and political upheaval that recreated China as a modern power.
- Chinese Maritime Customs Service: The Customs’ Gazette, 1869-1913The Customs’ Gazette, published by order of the Inspector General of Customs of China in Shanghai, provided quarterly reports on trade that were prepared and submitted by various custom houses based across the country. This statistical and narrative information provided the central Chinese government with an in-depth analysis on trade. But, the Gazette also provided insights into local and regional economic and social conditions, policing of customs and trade, and conditions at Treaty Ports.
- Chinese Newspapers Collection This link opens in a new window
Historical newspapers providing first-hand accounts and coverage of politics, society and events.
- The Chinese recorder and the Protestant missionary community in China, 1867-1941Part of Gale Archives unbound collection. Some issues are also free online via Hathi Trust.
Date Range: 1867-1941
- Foreign Office Files for China This link opens in a new window
Formerly restricted British diplomatic dispatches, letters, newspaper cuttings, maps, economic assessments, and synopses on leading Chinese personalities from the constant exchange of information between London and British diplomatic outposts in China. Provides unprecedented levels of detail into one of the most turbulent centuries of Chinese history
- Minutes of the Shanghai Municipal CouncilThis collection replicates all the minutes of meetings held by the Board of Directors of the Shanghai Municipal Council from July 1854 to December 1943. A wide range of topics were discussed at these board meetings, such as sanitation, transportation, telecommunication and postal service, taxation, urban planning, gas supply, street lighting, rickshaw operator management, animal protection, and police system. The minutes taken from July 1854 to December 1906 are handwritten while the rest are typewritten.
- Oxford Bibliographies: Chinese StudiesAuthoritative bibliographies on a wide variety of Chinese topics.
- Policing the Shanghai International Settlement, 1894-1945This collection provides researchers with the opportunity to explore a unique period in China’s struggle toward a modern existence through the International Settlement in Shanghai.
- Shanghai Municipal Council: The Municipal Gazette, 1908-1942The Municipal Gazette provides a unique window into the workings of the Shanghai International Settlement during the period of revolution, the Republic, internationalization of Shanghai, national uprising, and world war.
- Rafu Shimpo Digital Archive 羅府新報Published every weekday bilingually in Japanese and English for over 100 years, The Rafu Shimpo [L.A. Japanese Daily News] is the longest running Japanese American newspaper in the United States.
- SAT Daizōkyō Text DatabaseFull text of the Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō (大正新脩大藏經).
- Evangelism in Korea: Correspondence of the Board of Foreign Missions, 1884-1911he American Presbyterian Church was committed at its inception to the belief that it is a missionary church and that every member is a missionary. The establishment in 1837 of the Presbyterian Church’s Board of Foreign Missions signaled the beginning of a worldwide missionary operation destined to embrace some fifteen countries in four different continents The records offered here provide invaluable information on social conditions in Korea and on efforts to spread the gospel during the nineteenth century. Documenting the church’s educational, evangelical, and medical work, these are records mainly of incoming correspondence from the mission field and outgoing correspondence from the Board headquarters.
- DBpia This link opens in a new window
Korean scholarly journals covering literature, economics & business, medical science, humanities, theology, law & administration, arts, engineering, natural science, and education
- Kanopy This link opens in a new windowOn-demand streaming video service for documentaries, training films, and theatrical releases. Films under a current license agreement are available for immediate viewing. Other films may require a request through the Kanopy site. Viewing films in a group forum is permitted as long as the viewing is by Vanderbilt authorized viewers only (current faculty, staff, or students) and it is not for commercial benefit (i.e. no admission costs are charged and no profit is made from the screening).
- KMDB (한국영화데이테베이스)Searchable Korean Movie Database on films, people, images, articles, criticisms, scenarios, and publications
- Korean Classic Film VODKorean classic films from the one made in the 1940s during the Japanese colonial rule to the ones made today and independent films. KMDB VOD provides well-known Korean films from 1930 to 1990 including some quite classic films, documentaries and national videos as well as independent films.
- Korean Film Archive (한국영상자료원)The Korean Film Archive collects and preserves moving image materials as cultural heritage. In addition, the Archive has a specialized film library to provide easier digital access to film-related information
- Korean Classic Film Theater at YoutubeKorean classic films with Engish subtitles at Youtube provided by Korean Film Archive
- On Demand KoreaFree Korean drama
- 84,000 Project: Translating the Word of the BuddhaIncludes texts and (when available) English translations of the Kangyur and the Tengyur, Tibetan translations of Indian Buddhist texts.
- Asian Classics Input ProjectIncludes the Tibetan Digital Library (Kangyur, Tengyur, and Sungbum) and the Sanskrit Library, among other resources.
- Bibliotheca Polyglotta"[A] multilingual corpus of historically important texts," including the Pāli Tipiṭaka (in Pāli with English and Thai translations), the Kanjur Buddhist Sūtras in Tibetan, among other collections.
- Buddhist Digital Resource CenterFounded as the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center, the Buddhist Digital Resource Center preserves and makes accessible Tibetan Buddhist texts as well as the texts of other endangered Buddhist literary traditions.
- Chattha SangayanaPali Tipiṭaka (collection of the Buddha's teachings) in varying scripts.
- Digital Sanskrit Buddhist CanonTexts and the scans of some manuscripts from the Sanskrit Buddhist Canon.
- Gandhari Language and LiteratureBuddhist ande other texts in Gāndhārī, from manuscripts, inscriptions, coins, and documents. Site includes a Dictionary of Gāndhārī, a Bibliography of Gāndhārī Studies, and a Catalog of Gāndhārī Texts.
- GRETIL - Göttingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian LanguagesIncludes epic, religious, poetic, and other texts in Sanskrit, Pali, and other Indian languages.
- Myanmar Manuscript Digital Library (MMDL)Collects in one place digital versions of manuscripts and rare print editions from various libraries in Myanmar.
- SiddhamInscriptions from South and Central Asia, focused on the Gupta period (circa 320-550).
- Tibetan & Himalayan LibraryIncludes image collections, maps, and texts like the Tibetan Buddhist canon and Collected Tantras of the Ancients.
