The Asian Languages Collection at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem includes more than 10,000 titles in different Asian languages. The first of its kind in Israel, the collection was founded in 2007 with the support of The Louis Frieberg Center for East Asian Studies. It offers an essential foundation for research and teaching in Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is also open to guest researchers and visitors. The collection resides within the Bloomfield Library for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and is managed by a professional librarian.
The Asian Languages Collection includes special databases such as:
CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure 中国知网): This online database offers online access to over 6,000 academic papers, 5,000 newspapers and magazines, 400 M.A and PhD papers, statistical reports and other resources published in Mainland China. The database is a highly important research tool in Chinese history, culture, society, and politics.
Siku quanshu: Compiled in the Qianlong period of the Qing dynasty in the eighteenth century, the Siku quanshu 四庫全書 ("Complete Library in Four sections") was the largest collection of texts in pre-modern China and has an important historical place in the histories of cultural texts and academic thought in China. The collection includes resources compiled over a period of 3,000 years on topics such as literature, linguistics, history, philosophy, science, medicine, technology, and diplomacy. The online database offers access to more than 3,400 sources that are essential to the research of the history and culture of pre-modern China.
Chinese Ancient Texts (CHANT): A collection of databases of traditional and excavated ancient Chinese texts. Contains texts from earliest times (bone and bronze inscriptions) up to the 6th century AD.
Sinica Sinoweb (經典人文學刊庫): This database offers access to more than 17,000 essays about Chinese social sciences and humanities published by the Academia Sinica in Taipei.
Yomiuri Shimbun (ヨミダス歴史館): This database offers access to Japanese language essays published since 1874 in one of the most important journals of modern Japan.
Alongside these unique databases, the Asian Languages Collection includes special sub-collections, such as the Manga collection, consisting of hundreds of comics and illustrated books in Japanese; The Ofer Shagan Collection for Art and Material Culture in Japan; the WOK (Window on Korea) collections, which consists of more than 1,000 Korean-language books, essays and films. The Asian Languages Collections also includes more than 2,000 titles in Indian languages and in Indonesian, and hundreds of titles in Tibetan and Mongolian.
For further information, please contact the Head Librarian of the Asian Languages Collection, Mr. Hanoch Roniger (hanochr@savion.huji.ac.il), or Prof. Yuri Pines, the library project coordinator at the Frieberg Center for East Asian Studies (yuri.pines@mail.huji.ac.il).