Chinese Core Collections

The Chinese collections at the Ecole Française d'Extrême Orient Library started developing at the end of the 1950's, period during which the school moved from Southeast Asia to Paris. The Chinese collection was constructed in parallel to the EFEO's domains of excellency: art, archeology, history, anthropology, philology and religious sciences. In order to keep an up to date view of sinology, we never lose track of the development of our sinologists' researches (among whom M. Bussotti, P. Calanca, L. Y. Kuo, A. Arrault).
Following the evolution of Chinese collections in Parisian libraries, we coordinated with several specialized institutions (Collège de France, Bulac), in order to offer a homogeneous, complementary and complete Chinese collections throughout Paris.
Due to the EFEO presence in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, our collections benefit every year from exchanges and donations from prestigious institutions (Academia Sinica in Taiwan, The Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing...).
The Chinese collections are composed of about 15 000 monographs (which 75% are in Chinese) and 450 periodicals (half of which are in Chinese) among which 150 are current Chinese titles.
Last but not least, the Chinese collections also have non-printed material: rubbings, Luo manuscripts, Naxi (Dongba) manuscripts, maps and som collections at the photolibrary.

Contact: Dat-Wei Lau, head of the China and Korea collections