Harvard University's Yenching Library, United States Chinese Rare Books Catalog

Author: Shen Jin
Publisher:
Publication Date: 1999-02-01
Features: The catalog entries in this book include all the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasty printed books held by the library. Catalogs of fine Qing dynasty printed books, as well as manuscripts and handwritten copies, are still being written and will be included in a supplement when completed. The library's holdings of Dunhuang manuscripts, Xingtu, inscriptions, rubbings, imperial decrees, official notices, contracts, as well as Japanese and Korean printed books, are not included in the catalog.
The catalog entries provide information such as the title, volume count, author, edition, number of volumes, line and character count, height and width of the board frame, prefaces and postfaces, general content of the book, origin of the edition, names of engravers, collection status, and seals. The title of each book is based on the recording at the beginning of the first page of the original book. If a multi-volume book has inconsistent titles for each volume, the title of the first volume is used as the standard. The height and width of the board frame for each book are based on the specifications in the first page of the first volume. For local chronicles, the era of compilation is added before the title in square brackets.