Ningbo Tianyi Pavilion, the oldest private library in China, Hangzhou Wenlan Pavilion, the only imperial library in the south of the Yangtze River in the Qing Dynasty, and Huzhou Nanxun Jiaye Hall, the most famous private library in modern times… Zhejiang has had a prosperous literary style since ancient times and a rich collection of ancient books and documents. How can we make ancient books and documents “live” better? In the morning of the second day of the 2022 “Chinese traditional book publishing activity” in Zhejiang Province was held in Jiayetang, and the “Zhejiang Provincial Historical Document Digital Resources Library” was launched at the same time. As a provincial ancient book integration platform, it will provide more convenience for experts, scholars and ordinary readers to make good use of ancient book resources.
“Zhejiang Provincial General Database of Historical Documents and Digital Resources”( http://history.zjlib.cn )Zhejiang Library takes the lead in the construction of public libraries in Zhejiang Province. At present, it has published nearly 2300 kinds of digital ancient books, about 55000 volumes, most of which are from Zhejiang maps. Chu Shuqing, the curator of Zhejiang Library, said that as a provincial ancient books and documents integration platform, the general library fully reflects the collection of historical documents and digital resources in the province, realizing “one screen browsing and one key retrieval” of historical documents and resources.
The reporter saw on the website that the General Library classified the digital ancient books according to the traditional standards of philology of classics, history, sub collections, and collections, and also added “Republic of China documents”, “category clusters”, “other”, “rubbings” and other types. The retrieval module is divided into field retrieval, advanced retrieval, precise matching, fuzzy matching and other clusters to facilitate user retrieval as much as possible.
Zhejiang Library is one of the earliest provincial public libraries in China. The reporter learned from Zhetu that since 2010, they have started the digitization of ancient books and special collections, including precious ancient books, genealogy, rubbings, maps, and woodblocks. At present, 2572103 copies of 2577 kinds of engraving and ancient books have been digitized, including 338 kinds of national precious ancient books. In addition, 142362 rubbings and 27296 maps have been digitized.
The digitalized ancient books of Zhetu cover the national precious ancient books, printed manuscripts, manuscripts of scholars in Zhejiang and Zhejiang, and other characteristic collections, including various editions such as the Song and Yuan Dynasty printed books, handwritten books, movable type books, printed copies, manuscripts, and transcripts, such as the Tang Dynasty written book “The Prajna Paramita Sutra”, the Yuan Dynasty printed book “Supplement to Li Taibai’s Poems by Categories”, and the Qing Dynasty great poet Yuan Mei’s handwritten book “Suiyuan Poems”. They are all treasures of ancient books and documents in the library.