Chinese Library reading room--1960
LINUS July 1995
Lee Ching Seng, Head of Chinese Library
The Chinese Library was established in 1953 at the Bukit Timah campus to provide resource materials in the Chinese language in support of the Chinese Studies Department set up earlier in the same year.
With financial assistance from Mr Lee Kong Chian and Mr Yeap Chor Ee, the collection grew rapidly in the first three years. By 1956, the Library had about 130,000 volumes, which was largely purchased in Hong Kong and Japan by Mr Ho Kuang Chung, the head of the new Chinese Studies Department. This collection was then the largest collection of Chinese language materials in Southeast Asia.
Chinese Library reading room--1960
The Library staff started organising the collection in accordance with the Harvard-Yenching system. In 1955, with the removal of the offices on the top floor of the Main Library, space was made for the Chinese Library. The Chinese Library collection was further strengthened in 1964 by a gift of the library of 7,000 volumes owned by late Mr Koh Siow Nam.
Chinese Library loan counter--1970's
In April 1981, the Chinese Library moved to the Kent Ridge campus. It is now located on the 6th Floor of the Central Library Building. The Library of Congress Classification system was adopted in 1983 replacing the Harvard-Yenching system. In the same year, the Library computerised the cataloguing process by using MINISIS to input the records in hanyu pinyin. In June 1993, loan services at the Library were computerised using the Library Automated Circulation System (LACS).
Chinese Library loan counter today
The Chinese Library collection is an amalgamation of four Chinese collections in Singapore, namely the Ngee Ann College Library, the Nanyang University Library, the University of Singapore Library and the present National University of Singapore Library.
Chinese Library in NUS
Due to the shift in focus of the Institute of East Asian Philosophies, their collection of 30,000 volumes on Chinese classics was transferred on long-term loan to the Chinese Library in 1992. With the total holdings of five library collections, the present Chinese Library has over 415,300 volumes. It is the fourth largest collection when compared with twelve major Chinese collections outside China and Taiwan. The other three libraries are the Library of Congress, Harvard Yenching, both in the United States, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Throughout the 42 years of development, the Chinese Library collects mainly books and other research materials on Chinese studies. Chinese materials on Southeast Asia are also extensively collected. The collection is particularly rich in the classics and their commentaries, bibliography, archaeology, fine arts, philosophy, language and literature. Rare editions that are handwritten or printed in the Ming (1365-1644) and Qing (1644-1912) dynasties, academic and scholarly periodicals published in the early Republican period after 1911, and works on Buddhism are special features of the collection. The Library also has a sizeable collection of local newspapers published in the nineteenth century and books on the Southeast Asian Chinese. Recently, the scope of the library collection has been extended to include law in China, business administration and management in support of teaching programmes started in these areas.
| 1953-1967 | Mrs Ho Chiang Chen Yu |
| 1967-1971 | Mr Lim Hong Too |
| 1971-1983 | Mr Hui Kok Wah |
| 1983-1991 | Mr Koh Thong Ngee |
| 1991-1993 | Mr Hui Kok Wah |
| 1993- | Mr Lee Ching Seng |
| Next : History of Law Library | July Contents |
LINUS July 1995, NUS Libraries