English-language Serials in Pre-Revolution China

Final Report

(Submitted to SCOPA, Yale Universtiy Library)

Tao Yang

February 10, 2005

Overview

This project aims at investigating a unique type of publication: English-language serials from pre-revolution China. From early 19^th century to the communist revolution in 1949, many English-language newspapers and periodicals were published in China. These serials recorded and symbolized the intercultural experiences of two groups of people: one group being the Europeans and Americans who went to China and lived there and the other being the Chinese who were exposed to Western religion, science, and education. Therefore, these publications are valuable historical sources. However, due to many sociological reasons, these publications are largely forgotten in the libraries around the world.

With the support of the SCOPA Grant, I hired a student assistant who helped me collect information on this type of publications. The expenses cover primarily student wages, plus the cost of the EndNote 7 program, which I use to store the bibliographic information of these publications.

Two goals were set for this project in my proposal. The primary goal is to investigate the holdings of these newspapers and periodicals in the Yale collection and present the findings to the Yale community. The secondary goal is to identify the trends and patterns in the history of these publications and correlate the trends and patterns with the social-historical environment. In the following, I will describe the progress I made toward these two goals and my future plan after this project concludes.

Primary Goal

My primary goal is to investigate the holdings of these newspapers and periodicals in the Yale collection and present the findings to the Yale community. I have achieved the following:

Identified a total of 474 periodical titles and 111 newspaper titles through searching union catalog. This represents the holdings of these serials in the North American libraries.

Identified a total of 165 periodical titles and 14 newspaper titles in the Yale collection.

Identified around 14 periodicals in the Yale collection that are rare. Plan for preservation is underway.

Made one public presentations based on the findings in last September. Another presentation is scheduled in the late March.

Posted the list of periodicals and newspapers in the Yale collection with an introduction on the East Asia Library web site: http://www.library.yale.edu/eastasian/tutorials/eng_serials_cn.html. There is anecdotic evidence that this list is being used: I suppressed the link temporarily in January 2005 and later was asked by a student.

Secondary Goal

This has been achieved in an unexpected way. During the course of the project, I came across a reference book published in early 1970s from which I traced down a M.A. thesis titled: Western Periodical Publication in China: 1828-1949. Because the author of this thesis left the field of Asian studies after his graduation, his thesis is largely forgotten. After I obtained the microfilm of this thesis, I realized it did exactly what I tried to accomplish in my secondary goal. It analyzes the historical trends and spatial patterns of these Western periodicals, in a similar way as I outlined in my grant proposal. Therefore, I realized repeating similar analysis is not very meaningful.

Future Directions

With the experiences and knowledge gained through this SCOPA project, I have formulated several directions I can pursue in the future. This includes:

Enhance the list of Yale titles posted on the web through providing annotations and secondary sources that made use of these periodicals. This will increase the value of this list as a tool for library instruction. 

Create a more accurate list of serials available in the North American libraries. Because of the re-discovery of aforementioned M.A. thesis, I may be able to get a more accurate account of serials available in the North American libraries through comparing the titles mentioned in the thesis and the titles I found in the union catalogs.

Expand the scope to include monographs. During this project, I realized many of the English periodical publishers also published monographs in English. Through constructing a list of English-language presses in China, we may be able to identify most English-language books published in pre-revolution China. Because there is no union list of English books published in pre-revolution China, this work is helpful in identifying and preserving the sources that are forgotten.

Expenses

Student Wages      $798.76       

Software                $171.24

Photocopying         $  40.00

Total Expenses    $1,010.00