Skip to Main Content

East Asian Studies

Subject Liaison

Profile Photo
Wei Wang
Contact:
UVA Library
434.243.6253

Spotlight

Thanks to the foresight and generosity of Stanley and Lucie Weinstein, the University Library realized a bequest of a significant collection of scholarly books on Buddhism, particularly focused on Buddhism in Japan and China. The Weinstein collection also includes substantial holdings on Asian arts. This collection of nearly 11,000 volumes will make UVA one of the major holders of Buddhist materials in the country.

 

East Asian Collection at UVA

About the East Asian Collection

The East Asian Collection at the University of Virginia Library is a relatively new collection that includes resources for all major academic disciplines. It is particularly strong in:

  • Buddhism
  • Literature
  • History
  • Art

Approximately 1,400 titles in the Collection are unique and not held by any other library in the world.

 

Notable Features of the Collection

  • In 2006, the Collection gained all library materials from the Institute for Advanced Studies of World Religions, which included more than 100,000 items about Buddhism and East Asian culture.
  • The Collection also includes the Ma Kiam Collection, a collection of more than 10,000 volumes of Chinese classical works in traditional stitched binding, valuable for teaching literature, history and philosophy.
  • The Library still maintains its Chinese and Japanese text initiatives - two pioneering projects digitizing authoritative editions of Chinese and Japanese literary works. These are among the very few digital projects that supply an English translation alongside the original script.

 

Electronic Resources

The East Asian Collection includes resources in a variety of electronic formats. Major resources include:

  • Full-text databases such as China Academic Journals and DBpia, online Siku Quanshu, the statistics-centered China Data Online, the encyclopedic Duxiu and JapanKnowledge.
  • For video resources, the Library has more than 1,400 DVDs in East Asian languages, including the complete run (100+) of the “Documentary DVDs of the Contemporary China” series.
  • The Library has Yokohama Rokuon Tosho 横浜錄音図書 audiobook series, a collection of over 240 Japanese audio books, which is not held by any other library in the U.S., together with all the underlying literary works.

 

Where to Find the East Asian Collection

The Collection is housed mainly at the Alderman Library. Many resources in East Asian languages can also be found at the Fine Arts Library, Clemons Library, and others.

(Note that materials in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages are shelved together with other languages on the same subjects according to Library of Congress Classification)