• Index of this issue

No. 59, July 2007

In recent years, National Central Library (NCL) has been establishing information systems to serve research needs in various academic fields. Among the most useful of these systems are online bibliographies and indexes. Since 1945, Taiwan has made considerable research achievements and progress in the area of Chinese humanities. Such resources, including books, academic journals, degree thesis papers, daily newspapers, and collected academic papers and seminar proceedings, have provided important reference value for Sinological research in Taiwan and abroad. Accessing these materials, however, has been hindered by the lack of a comprehensive index and database information service for such resources not only in Taiwan but in Hong Kong and China as well.

To address this shortcoming, the NCL invited professors Wang Kuo-liang and Liu Ning-huei of the Institute of Chinese Bibliography and Textual Criticism at National Taipei University to carry out a cooperative plan in 2005 to compile, key-in and collate information for a database index of resources related to Chinese humanities. The NCL took charge of establishing and maintaining a database for such information, with convenient online search and classified browsing functions available to users around the world. The Taiwan Humanities Indexes service and the NCL's "Index to Chinese Periodical Literature (PerioPath)" will also be linked to mutually complement the resources of each system.

The system includes the following scope of information: 1. Period: Publications from 1945 to the first half of 2005; 2. Region: Taiwan publications, mainly from the NCL collection; 3. Type: Mainly books, including regularly or irregularly published collections of academic papers or essays, proceedings of academic seminars, collected thesis papers by individual authors, and collected honorary birthday and memorial essays (excluding academic journals, degree thesis papers and daily newspapers); 3. Topics: Mainly research related to Chinese culture, literature, history, thought, academics, and other humanities fields; 4. Indexing principles: The entire table of contents of each publication is included. Any publication with content on western research or content in the fields of society, natural science, etc. is not included.

Two types of format were adopted for the indexed information—book indexes and single article indexes. Materials can be queried for by basic, advanced, integrated and linked search functions. Linked searches can be conducted across three major systems, including the NCL collection catalog, National Bibliographic Information Network (NBINet), and PerioPath: Index to Chinese Periodical Literature. Users can also browse resources by category.

“Taiwan Humanities Indexes” website: http://memory.ncl.edu.tw/tm_sd/index.jsp