Professor Wang Jian’s object of the themed-project is to collate, disclose and study the current “Asia Library” of the library of Jilin University.
In order to meet the need of Tsarist Russia for its aggression and expansion, “Asia Library” at first served as an information database of Asia, especially an investigation, collection and compilation of information of the northeast China. Later on, the whole database was snatched by the Japanese imperialist and has gone through a tossing journey after the defeat of Japan. Until finally, it was kept in the library of Jilin University and was of great, unique and important value in the studies of modern and contemporary Northeast Asia with China as the center and with the involvement in the various political powers in the Northeast Asia.
The project has three main objects. The first object is to collate, filter, edit and arrange current document materials as well as record metadata. Because of bibliographic data, the project analyzes and studies all the data in the library from aspects of subjects, index and contents, and to disclose information accordingly. The second object is to collect actual bibliographic information of the current library according to the original catalogue of the library of 1938 and toThe Bibliography of “Asia Library” of 1942(《“亚细亚文库”图书目录追录》); Based on such approach, the project collects information at home and abroad, completes the library and finally reproduces the whole picture of “Asia library”. The third object is to study the library from perspectives of philology and history and in terms of languages, contents, value of different editions, values of historical materials and major historical issues. The main philological studies of the “Asia Library”, which discloses comprehensively the whole value of the library to the academic circle, are to open the access of the library to the outside world and can be used by many scholars. The main historical studies of the “Asia Library” make possible the studies on Chinese history centered on the history of the northeast China and the studies of the world history centered on the history of Russia.
