Calligraphy art without boundaries: Reviving historical East Asian texts in the library

Abstract

Run Run Shaw Library of City University of Hong Kong (CityU) is the first university library in Hong Kong to acquire the Collection of Korean Anthologies (CKA) (Hanja: 《韓國歷代文集叢書》; Hangul: 한국역대문집총서), a massive collection of more than 3,000 classic anthologies written by more than 3,000 Korean writers from 7th century to early 20th century in Chinese characters. In 2012, CityU, in collaboration with Jeju National University (Korea) and University of California, Berkeley (USA), launched a major digital index database that transcribed the essay-level titles of CKA into Chinese, Hangul, and Hangul Romanization. CityU Library has also shelved China’s largest historical encyclopedic Chinese texts collection Siku Quanshu (SKQS) (Chinese: 《四庫全書》) together with a database.