Sinological Libraries
North AmericaThis is a list of Sinological libraries in North America, arranged by the number of Chinese volumes in the collection (but excluding Chinese serials and non-print resources, and also excluding relevant Japanese and Western language materials, which are assumed to exist in proportion). Since there are no significant collections in Central or South America (see Spanish Sinology), this list reports the entire New World.
The figures are taken from the 2003 report of the Committee on East Asian Libraries (a part of AAS), as supplemented by direct research undertaken in 2004. The chief effects of the supplementary research are: (1) The total Chinese holdings (141,938 volumes) of the Borough of Queens Public Library System, whose 63 branches largely serve a general Chinese readership, are here reduced to the approximately 18,000 volumes included in the International Resource Center which occupies one floor of the Flushing branch. (2) We have added several institutions (including two consortia) which, for whatever reason, are not represented in the CEAL report. In this category are New York Public Library (100,000*), the University of Iowa (80,000*), the Claremont Colleges (70,000*) the University of Oregon (60,000*), the University of Colorado at Boulder (59,800), the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, including directly available Four College holdings (33,000*), Dartmouth College (30,425), Rochester University (29,000*), Oberlin College (22.000), and several smaller institutions. It has not always been possible to standardize to volume count as opposed to title count, but as far as we can contrive, the figures given are mutually comparable. We here express our gratitude to all the librarians who have assisted us by providing information for their institutions.
We continue to seek additional information, and will add it to the list as it is received. The adjusted list presently contains 70 US and Canadian libraries. An asterisk (*) indicates an estimate of holdings.
Taken together, the figures suggest a general principle. It is that Sinological libraries are not smoothly distributed by size, but tend to cluster around several nodes, each probably representing a maximum balance between support costs and use yield. One result is that the data are inclined to separate themselves into several groups. This permits the identification of what are here called Tiers. Note that in the lower Tiers the chance of unreported libraries increases, and completeness is not to be assumed. This is the level at which small library holdings are comparable in size to major individual book collections.
Rank Institution Volumes 01 Library of Congress 950,258 02 Harvard-Yenching 603,769 03 Princeton 443,494 04 Yale 422,990 05 UC/Berkeley 407,971 06 Chicago 380,804 07 Michigan 363,555 08 Columbia 353,605 09 Cornell 351,349 10 British Columbia 268,751 11 Stanford 255,751 12 UCLA 255,115 13 U of Washington (Seattle) 246,311 14 Rutgers 236,515 15 Pittsburgh 216,507 16 Toronto 194,763 17 Illinois/Champaign-Urbana 157,689 18 Arizona 150,585 19 Hawaii 142,125 20 Ohio State 139,484 21 Pennsylvania 128,959 22 Indiana 125,638 23 Kansas 121,356 24 North Carolina 120,853 25 Wisconsin 120,749 26 New York Public 100,000* 27 Minnesota 95,702
28 Brown 29 UC/Santa Barbara 30 Washington U (St Louis) 31 Iowa 32 UC/Irvine 33 Claremont Colleges 34 UC/San Diego 35 Oregon 36 Colorado/Boulder 37 Texas/Austin 38 Arizona State 39 Brigham Young 40 McGill 41 Maryland 42 UC/Davis 43 Southern California 44 Alberta 45 Inst for Adv Study of World Religions (Carmel NY) 46 Massachusetts/Amherst and Five College 47 Virginia 48 Dartmouth 49 Rochester 50 Georgetown 51 Far East Research Libr (Minneapolis) 52 Michigan State 53 Oberlin 54 Florida 55 Duke 56 Queens Public Library System (Flushing) 57 Montréal 58 Penn State 59 Nelson-Atkins Museum 60 Washington (Law Library) 61 Emory 62 Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) 63 Field Museum 64 Ctr for E Asian Archaeology (Boston University) 65 Johns Hopkins 66 Notre Dame 67 Grinnell 68 Lehigh 69 SUNY/Albany 70 Purdue
Using this list as an index of the Sinological power of the respective institutions would be risky, since other institutional support may not be in proportion, and since a mere volume count does not guarantee subject balance, indicate subject concentration, or reflect collection quality as such. Sharing arrangements, such as exist between Duke (Japanese emphasis) and North Carolina (Chinese emphasis) are also not shown. As far as we know, the University of Southern California collection (41,640) is the smallest which serves as a base for a PhD program (in selected fields), and the University of Virginia collection (31,667) is the smallest to support an MA program. We invite further information on this point as well.
26 Nov 2005 / Contact The Project / Exit to Sinology Page
