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This article traces the history of the relationship of papermaking and paper to libraries over time. Paper was first made in China and is traditionally considered one of that nation's four greatest inventions, along with gun powder, printing, and the compass. Papermaking was often associated with archives in its early development in China, as well as when it was introduced to Japan, where it came to be a part of some Shinto and Buddhist temples, and later governmental agencies. Under Islam, the availability of paper was linked to increased literacy and growth of libraries. In early modern Europe, before the widespread use of wood in the papermaking process, libraries and archives were part of an "economy of paper" with paper at times being in short supply. In the modern era, the world of papermaking did not intersect much with the world of the library, which made progress with the problem of brittle books, one of its greatest challenges, slow, though recent efforts of government, industry, scientists, and representatives of the library have produced positive results. The damage caused by wood-based paper in libraries was mirrored by the environmental damage caused by wood-based papermaking in communities. The history of papermaking and libraries demonstrates the importance of understanding the technologies which support the library, while also advocating effectively to the representatives of all its sources of support in ways which promote the values of the library and its associated community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For those receiving funding from the UK HEFCE-funded Open Educational Resource Programme (2009-2012), the sustainability of project outputs was one of a number of essential goals. Our approach for the hosting and distribution of health and life science open educational resources (OER) was based on the utilisation of the WordPress.org blogging platform and search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques to curate content and widen discovery. This paper outlines the approaches taken and tools used at the time, and reflects upon the effectiveness of web strategies several years post-funding. The paper concludes that using WordPress.org as a platform for sharing and curating OER, and the adoption of a pragmatic approach to SEO, offers cheap and simple ways for small-scale open education projects to be effective and sustainable.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine green university initiatives in the context of China, using Tsinghua University, which is China's green university pioneer, as a case study. Design/methodology/approach: The research method used for this paper is a case study based on participant observation and document analysis. The approach to data collection includes the examination of archive records, yearbooks and statistical information regarding Tsinghua University. Findings: This paper finds that Tsinghua's green university initiative is a response to Tsinghua's strategy of establishing a word-class university, with a goal of bearing more responsibility in promoting a sustainable society. Tsinghua employs one principle (green university) and three dimensions (green education, green research and green campus) to frame its green university initiative. Tsinghua's green university initiative has earned many achievements, but it has also faced many challenges, such as ignoring social justice, fragmented coordination efforts and the lack of effective communication and assessment mechanisms. Practical implications: As a leading university and the pioneering green university in the country, Tsinghua University is very influential with regard to the development of green universities in China. Many other universities have designed their own programs based on Tsinghua's experiences in the green university initiative. As such, Tsinghua's experiences provide reference values to other universities in China. Originality/value: This paper comprehensively examines the evolution, framework, achievements and challenges of the green university initiative of Tsinghua University. It helps the audience to know how China's universities understand and practice education for sustainable development.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review the current status of collaboration in cultural heritage preservation in East Asia, including digital projects, and to suggest practical improvements based on a cultural structuralism perspective. Design/methodology/approach: Through exploratory research, the paper addresses aspects for successful collaboration in cultural heritage digitisation in East Asia. Findings: The paper indicates the difference in collaboration of cultural heritage digitisation between regions such as Europe and the unique situation in East Asia. Social implications: If collaboration between the countries of East Asia was implemented then such a community could deal with the issues of cultural heritage by having a standard scheme or policy. Originality/value: There has been little literature published on East Asian cultural heritage initiatives, particularly in the area of digitisation and digital preservation. (Contains 4 figures.)

Purpose: To obtain first-hand data on the main challenges in preserving digital resources in libraries, archives and information centres in China. Design/methodology/approach: The data in this paper have been acquired by e-mail questionnaire. The conclusions are based on feedback from 57 respondents, distributed in 14 provinces in China, who work in libraries, archives and information centres with rich digital collections and long-term experience in preserving digital resources. Findings: The authors consider that the long-term preservation of digital resources in China faces two critical difficulties: firstly, the pressure on preserving digital resources has not been fully recognised and so the relevant training in the management and operation of digital preservation is absent; secondly, government departments attach little importance to this field and lack uniform guidelines. Therefore, the paper suggests that relevant international conferences or workshops should be held in China, and that a working group led by the National Development and Reform Commission of China should be set up to plan the construction, sharing and maintenance of Chinese digital resources. Research limitations/implications: This research is limited to Chinese administration systems. Although the data in this paper are authentic and representative, nevertheless it is a small sample of the numerous document collection organisations in the country. Practical implications: The data and analysis in this paper should greatly help international colleagues understand the status regarding the preservation of digital resources in China. Originality/value: This research is the first of its kind undertaken in China and will provide a new vision for international peers and organisations involved in digital documentary heritage around the world.

Using recently declassified archival material pertaining to the Chartered Bank of India Australia and China, this article foregrounds quantitative evidence that sheds new light on the history of British banks in Asia. It shows that Hong Kong came to play a critical role in the bank's note issue strategy after the Straits Settlements had moved off the silver standard in 1906. Locally denominated notes issued on mainland China complemented the Hong Kong issue. However, their circulation volume dropped dramatically during the anti-British boycott that followed the May Thirtieth Incident (1925). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of a qualitative study exploring the understudied history of China's rural archives over the past 40 years and the forces that have driven different stages of their development. Applying a mixed-methods approach consisting of a literature review, website visits, document analysis and field research to examine both "administrative village" and "rural community" archives, the study developed a comprehensive understanding of the history, status and the future of China's rural archives. It defines rural archives not from the traditional perspective of "villages" but rather from the perspective of being "rural." It shows the landscape of China's rural archives in the past 40 years and reveals the current conditions of rural archives in terms of resource construction, management workflow and utilization optimization. It analyzes the problems lying behind these achievements, critiquing the management system from the public's point of view, not that of local governments. Finally, it proposes a network framework for addressing these problems and improving the situation of rural archives, as well as promoting the archiving and preservation of rural memory. The paper argues that the study thus provides a replicable model that might be used by archivists or researchers to study rural archives in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of information culture in Mainland China and apply the information culture framework to an organizational setting. Design/methodology/approach: The foundation for the research is provided by a review of Chinese and English language literature and a case study of a university library was conducted, involving semi-structured interviews. Findings: The information culture framework facilitated identification of factors not recognized in previous information culture research, including uniquely Chinese factors of egocentrism, guanxi (relationships), mianzi (face), hexie (harmony) and renqing (mutual benefit). A further finding highlighted the profound differences between archives and library institutions in China. Originality/value: The paper provides the first step toward further exploring features of Chinese organizational culture which will not only influence information management practices but also highlight the issues relating to collaboration between libraries and archives in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study aimed at providing a structure for the various types of "archives" in China. As the concept of "archives" in China has Chinese characteristics (hence the quotation marks), so is the practice in China that is relevant to the Chinese "archives." Developing a typology of Chinese "archives," therefore, did not strive to tease out the logics between and among these types, but rather focused on outlining their existence in their originating environment. The typology was developed using the perspective of historical development, i.e., presenting the various types of archives along with the particular times and/or spaces in which they existed and functioned. Representative features were summarized based on the practices associated with these archives, i.e., the time requirement for internal archival transfer, the broad coverage of archives and the flexible criteria for archives categorization. These features differ from those in other countries and are related to the requirements of Chinese archival management. It is hoped that this presentation of the typology of Chinese "archives" will provide readers outside of China an informative introduction and a general understanding of archival practices in China, and will provide a foundation for comparative studies between China and other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical framework to illustrate the archival knowledge applied by archivists in their personal archiving (PA) and the mechanism of the application of archival knowledge in their PA. Design/methodology/approach: The grounded theory methodology was adopted. For data collection, in-depth interviews were conducted with 21 archivists in China. Data analysis was performed using the open coding, axial coding and selective coding to organise the archival knowledge composition of PA and develops the awareness-knowledge-action (AKA) integration model of archival knowledge application in the field of PA, according to the principles of the grounded theory. Findings: The archival knowledge involved in the field of PA comprises four principal categories: documentation, arrangement, preservation and appraisal. Three interactive factors involved in archivists' archival knowledge application in the field of PA behaviour: awareness, knowledge and action, which form a pattern of awareness leading, knowledge guidance and action innovation, and archivists' PA practice is flexible and innovative. The paper underscored that it is need to improve archival literacy among general public. Originality/value: The study constructs a theoretical framework to identify the specialised archival knowledge and skills of PA which is able to provide solutions for non-specialist PA and develops an AKA model to explain the interaction relationships between awareness, knowledge and action in the field of PA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how Si-shu, a traditional form of local, private education grounded in classical instruction, responded to the rapid modernization of education during the late Qing dynasty and early Republic of China and to explain why these schools, once extraordinarily adaptable, finally disappeared. Design/methodology/approach: The authors have examined both primary and secondary sources, including government reports, education yearbooks, professional annals, public archives, and published research to analyze the social, political and institutional changes that reshaped Si-shu in the context of China's late-19th- and early-20th-century educational modernization. Findings: Si-shu went through four stages of institutional change during the last century. First, they faced increased competition from new-style (westernized) schools during the late Qing dynasty. Second, they engaged in a process of intense self-reform, particularly after the Xinhai Revolution of 1911. Third, they were marginalized by the new educational systems of the Republic of China, especially the Renxu School System of 1922 and the Wuchen School System of 1928. Finally, after the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, they were considered remnants of feudal culture and forcibly replaced by modern schools. Originality/value: This paper brings hitherto unexplored Chinese sources to an English-speaking audience in an effort to shed new light on the history of traditional Chinese education. The fate of Si-shu was part of the larger modernization of Chinese education – a development that had both advantages and disadvantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BioScience Trends (BST) is a peer-reviewed journal belongs to the International Research and Cooperation Association for Bio & Socio-Sciences Advancement (IRCA-BSSA) Group of Japan. Despite a decade of existence, no study was performed to measure the bibliometric profile of the journal. The objective of this study was to investigate the bibliometric characteristic of BST. A bibliometric analysis will specifically measure: 1) growth rate of the scientific publications, 2) dynamics of authorship and collaboration pattern; 3) core research themes of articles that have been published, and 4) citation pattern of BST. Bibliographical archives of BST were obtained from the Core Collection database of the Web of Science (WoS). We divided the dataset into three interval periods, 2007-2010, 2011-2014 and 2015-2017 respectively. Data processing and analysis was performed using Bibliometrix, a bibliometric analysis package in R software, VOSViewer 1.66, Orange 3.15 and CitNetExplorer. Within one decade of scientific production, BST continues to attract global researchers in life sciences. However, it is still dominated by authors from China and Japan. Annual journal growth of BST is 12.83 %. Reaching the end of the first decade, number of first author and the country origin multiplied, 20 and 5 times respectively, compared to the first-year. Research themes are consistent with the Aims and Scope of the Journal with strong emphasizes on molecular biology, biochemistry, and clinical research. Entering the second decade, strategies to promote and enlarge authors participation from countries that are not in the current list are encouraged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2012 the National Archives Administration of China issued Provisions on the Scope of Archives Collection at All Levels and Various Types of Archives, pointing out that comprehensive archives should collect "archives of famous persons", and clarifying the importance of celebrity archives. Many provinces in China actively carry out celebrity archives work, while some provincial archives have formulated relevant system standards. This paper analyses the collection and utilization of celebrity archives in provincial archives in China, and considers the development of the management of celebrity archives, including collection content, collection methods, classification methods and sharing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Records function in society with multiple utilities, and this article reports on their role in establishing organizational identity for individuals. As a unique group within society, farmer workers face a number of difficulties, and one of them is about identity: what identity do they possess, what identity should or could they possess and what identity is or will be of assistance to their current lives? Utilizing the identity status typology, this paper assesses the current identity situation of farmer workers and then reports on the efforts of the Chinese records profession in assisting the formation of a positive farmer worker identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade Fairs, throughout their long history, have always interacted with their host cities on multiple levels. The significant contribution of trade fairs to the tourism development of their host cities was and still remains undisputed. The city of Thessaloniki has recorded a long and remarkable historical tradition in the organisation of trade fairs. This paper attempts to examine the concept of the ‘Honoured Country’ within the framework of the International Fair of Thessaloniki, historically, and to explore its multifaceted role. The central hypothesis of this paper concerns the exploration of the multi-aspect role of the ‘Honoured Country’ concept during TIF and the highlighting of its impact on the city’s tourism development. This exploration will take place both over time – through the study of the historical archives of TIF-HELEXPO – as well as through the case study of the 82nd TIF, during which China was be the ‘Honoured Country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Silk Road played an important role in the economic and cultural exchanges between central China, Europe and Central Asia. A number of heritage sites with significant values still remain throughout the Gobi Desert and other desert regions in Northwest China. Most of the heritage sites composed of adobeern materials and the earthen structures have been impacted by adverse environmental conditions for thousands of years causing severe damage with only a small proportion of the structures left surviving to the present day. Analysis of the main environmental factors affecting the heritage sites such as temperature difference, wind storms, rain storms, and the freeze-thaw process and a study of the mechanism of the deterioration are the main topics presented in this paper. The authors have concluded that a Potassium-Silica solution PS invented by one of the authors has been effective in improving the intrinsic properties of heritage site earthen structures with regard to reducing the impact of environmental damage. The results of comparative tests show that samples treated by using the PS solution have performed well, particularly in protecting structures from aeolian erosion and heavy rainfall. Some findings on the effect of PS treatment on earthen structures at heritage sites are discussed in detail in the present paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The profusion of data created by modern research has brought about increasing discussion on the practice of data management and the development of such infrastructure. Many universities and libraries are exploring how to address this issue using institutional repositories, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) Library being one of them. As part of the exploration, the author conducted a case study of datasets at major institutional repositories. This paper visits the issues relating to data archiving, reports common practices of data treatment at institutional repositories, and presents a list of recommendations for experimenting data archiving at the HKUST Institutional Repository. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What narratives can be fashioned by the historian from visual documents, and how might this relate to the narrative intention of those who created them? This paper explores the handful of surviving photographs recording the career of a British member of the Shanghai Municipal Police between 1929 and 1943. War and internment destroyed most of the visual records that former coalminer Frank Peasgood had collected during his police service, saving only those that had accompanied letters he had sent home to his family. The narrative he created with these can be clearly presented, and is discussed in the first part of the paper. Clearly, only visual documents could so powerfully demonstrate the transformation undergone by a man coming from his background, and provide the tools for showing that transformation. The photographs are then revisited and a further, complicating, layer of narrative is added, one which puts the policeman back into his place as a colonial subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to analyze the present status of the open access movement in Pakistan, identify challenges, and make recommendations for the effective use of this publishing model. The article looks primarily at the open access movement in Asia, with special reference to Pakistan, India, and China. Findings show that, since the emergence of the Budapest Open Access Initiative in 2001, the open access movement has developed rapidly at the international level. From the Pakistani perspective, gold open access, in which articles or monographs are freely available in their original form on publishers' websites, developed quickly. However, green open access, which relies on authors to self-archive their articles in institutional or subject repositories, has been relatively slow to develop. A lack of support from educational institutions, libraries, library associations, and funding bodies may explain the slow growth of green open access in Pakistan. The author recommends that Pakistani universities, research institutions, and funding agencies develop open access policies, set up institutional repositories, and encourage publishing in open access journals and self-archiving in institutional repositories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article notes international serials and electronic resource management news for July 1, 2012. The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services' Continuing Resources Section presented the Ulrich’s Serials Librarianship Award to Valerie Bross. The North American Serials Interest Group's newly elected officers include Joyce Tenney, Shana McDonald, and Chris Brady. The Library of Congress' Bibliographic Framework Initiative General Plan is on its website at http://www.loc.gov/marc/transition/pdf/bibframework-10312011.pdf.

Published in 1896 in London, The Mystic Flowerly Land: A Personal Narrative of a Visit to China was one of the three major works written by Charles Halcombe (b. c.1865) that were set in China. As one who first worked as an editorial staff for the North China Daily News then an Imperial Maritime Customs Officer in China, Halcombe's The Mystic Flowerly Land contained a range of archives, folklore and legends that he presumably heard and collected during his seven-year sojourn in China. From appropriating the styles of Romantic lyric poetry and Victorian popular urban sketches to citing Chinese and English newspaper cuttings, Halcombe textually recreates a mystic flowerly land to his intended readers. By invoking the concept of the palimpsest in this essay, I explore his acts of palimpsesting, as well as reveal the 'palimpsestuous' condition – 'a simultaneous relation of intimacy and separation' in Sarah Dillon's terms – in the narrative. My paper will show that the textual and visual entanglements within the narrative ultimately reveal the ambivalent attitude of the writer and the various, and at times conflicted, cultural assumptions that underline the portrayal of China in the long nineteenth century [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important components of the National Qing History Project is to rescue and sort out some original Qing archival documents that will be suitable for our compilation of the new Qing History. Such an action will not only be useful for the new Qing History Project but will also serve the purpose of rescuing and protecting our cultural heritage. The archival sifting and project setting of the Qing History Project have two major components: the archival documents of the Qing central government that are stored at the First Historical Archives of China and the Qing local government documents and private papers and records that are held by some local archives, libraries, and museums. As the first group of projects, the national-level archives (the First Historical Archives of China) have filed thirteen applications for twenty different subprojects on the Qing archives, involving about two million documents. Among these, seventeen subprojects involving about 1.6 million documents have been approved by the Commission for the Compilation of the Qing History Project. So far, ten of these approved projects (involving 850,000 archival documents) have been reorganized, recorded, and digitized according to the schedules set in the contracts. Second, thirteen groups of applications (twenty-four subprojects) have been filed by local archives, libraries, and museums. Of these, twelve projects have been approved, involving about 300,000 documents in total. The Qing archival documents sorted out by the Qing History Project have the characteristics of being rich, systematic, and authentic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of IFLA Journal is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article lists part of the archives of case files from the Sichuan Provincial Administration Commission in China during the Ming dynasty. It covers two collections, the first being reports in which the cases were sent forward as individual files, and the second are originally part of consolidated reports. According to the article, the purpose of the description and annotated index is to make the case files' content more readily accessible to researchers of Ming social history and Ming local administration.

As a critical material manifestation of Chinese culture, silk has both important and significant cultural representational value as well as multidimensional information worth. Silk archives are an important carrier of silk culture and memory. The Archives of Suzhou Silk are the most complete archives of silk in existence and document the heritage of China and even the world beyond. To better tell the story of the Archives of Suzhou Silk in a digital environment, this article adopts a case study method, taking the Taffeta Archives of the Suzhou Dongwu Silk Factory as an example. It approaches these archives from the perspective of archival science and narratology, discusses the digital storytelling framework of the Archives of Suzhou Silk, and builds a narrative-oriented "story material discovery–story element organization–digital story generation" path and an object-oriented "digitization–datamation–graphing–storytelling" path to build content-based and structure-based narrative graphs and narrative space applications. The construction of the digital storytelling framework can fully show the value of the archival documentary heritage of Suzhou silk, allowing it to better tell its story and providing new thinking for the sustainable development of the Memory of the World Documentary Heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mikhail Borodin, a Bolshevik Party member, became one of Moscow's most influential foreign operatives in China in the early 1920s. The access to many previously inaccessible Russian and Chinese archival sources after the collapse of the former Soviet Union made it possible for scholars to conduct a new study on Borodin's Mission to China. Perhaps the most extraordinary finding to emerge from the new sources is that it was not the Comintern, but the Soviet Politburo, acting on Stalin's recommendation, sent Borodin to China. His assignments there went far beyond "making revolution." While in China, he was involved in almost every important aspect of Soviet operations, including secret diplomacy, dealing with all factions: the Nationalists, the Communists, and the various warlords, as well as the warlord-controlled Beijing government. Without a proper understanding of Borodin's Mission to China, it would be next to impossible to comprehend Moscow's policies toward China in the 1920s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Indias is the property of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

How to recruit, test, and train the intelligent recommendation system users, and how to assign the archive translation tasks to all intelligent recommendation system users according to the intelligent matching principles are still a problem that needs to be solved. With the help of proper names and terms in China's Imperial Maritime Customs archives, this manuscript aims to solve the problem. When the corresponding translation, domain or attributes of a proper name or term is known, it will be easier for some archive translation tasks to be completed, and the adaptive archive intelligent recommendation system will also improve the efficiency of intelligent recommendation quality of archive translation tasks. These related domains or attributes are different labels of these archives. To put it simply, multi-label classification means that the same instance can have multiple labels or be labelled into multiple categories, which is called multi-label classification. With the multi-label classification, archives can be classified into different categories, such as the trade archives, preventive archives, personnel archives, etc. The system users are divided into different professional domains by some tests, for instance, system users who are good at economic knowledge and users who have higher language skills. With these labels, the intelligent recommendation system can make the intelligent match between the archives and system users, so as to improve the efficiency and quality of intelligent archive translation tasks. In this manuscript, through multilabel classification, the intelligent recommendation system can realize the intelligent allocation of archive translation tasks to the system users. The intelligent allocation is realized through the construction of intelligent control model, and verifies that the intelligent recommendation system can improve the performance of task allocation over time without the participation of task issuers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of Buddhist monastic reconstruction has long focused on the leading role played by well-connected literati and charismatic monks in periods of fervent Buddhist revival in the late Ming and late Qing respectively. This article seeks to redirect scholarly focus and give voice to clerics and institutions that are so far marginalized in the history of Chinese Buddhism. By using legal archives, this article examines how ordinary clerics, including Daoists, used locally available resources to finance temple reconstruction in nineteenth-century Sichuan. In particular, since Sichuan had rich coal deposits and timber reserves, they routinely tapped into these resources to fund reconstruction projects. However, such efforts tended to aggravate the clergy-laity relationship due to ecological and fengshui concerns. In this regard, reconstruction did not always build upon and lead to community consensus. By foregrounding the experience of less-known Buddhist clerics, the article questions the dominant narrative of monastic reconstruction and deepens our understanding of the complexity of institutional Buddhism in imperial China. 學界關於佛教寺廟重建的研究長期聚焦在明末或清末佛教復興時期士紳和高僧的領導作用。與之相對，本文把目光轉向在佛教研究中被長期邊緣化的底層僧侶。通過利用檔案材料，本文探討十九世紀四川底層佛教和道教僧侶如何利用地方資源來籌措資金進行寺廟重建。尤其值得注意的是，因為四川煤炭和木材資源豐富，當地僧侶充分利用這些資源來為重建提供資金支持。但是，由於生態和風水因素的影響，這種做法有可能導致僧俗關係的惡化。因此，寺廟重加並不一定建立在地方社會共識的基礎上，也不一定必然會促進僧俗關係的改善。通過視角轉移，本文對現有寺廟重建的敘事提出質疑，藉此加深學界對於帝製晚期製度性佛教的認識。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the relationship between researchers and archivists in the People's Republic of China, based on two co-authors' respective experiences of the same archive centres. It shows how the clearance procedures, the imprecise regulations, and the arbitrary power of archivists at various levels can either open access to restricted documents, or prevent access to others that are supposedly 'open to the public'. To this extent, this article shows how the fragmented and authoritarian nature of the Chinese bureaucracy shapes the relationship between administrators and the people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the Yuan Dynasty's Prince Anding Duolizhiba recorded in the Khoto-Khoto documents, including his lineage, the place of his garrison, and his activities in the late Yuan Dynasty. The soldiers named Duolizhihanyi in the documents were the prince's garrison that was stationed in Eji Nai City and supplied by the local authority. The fact tells us that the Mongolian princes' garrisons lacked an independent supply system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Archives of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) include a small lot of material relating to the three expeditions to western China organized and financed by Count Ōtani Kozui (1902–14), with the aim of exploring Buddhist sites. Ōtani also recognized the significance of promoting their results outside of Japan and integrating them into the international academic community, primarily Britain. Since his collection was later dispersed, the material in the RGS Archives provides valuable information on the expeditions and clarifies the context for some of the discoveries. In addition, it evidences traces of the interaction between Japanese and British scholarly circles, as an example of the complex international network of scholarship on Central Asia in the early part of the twentieth century. It also shows the efforts invested by the Japanese side in trying to have their results acknowledged as being equal to those of Western explorers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses the essence and formation of the Monthly Archives of the Eight Banners and the connection between the Monthly Archives and the Veritable Records of early emperors/Khans in the Qing dynasty. Evidences show that the compilations of Monthly Archives by two Banners of the same major colors were officially formed at least in the beginning of Hong Taiji's reign. As a sample archive of 1631 reveals, Monthly Archives recorded various events of the later Jin dynasty by focusing on the speeches and actions of Grand Khans on a daily basis. These archives were officially preserved in the Literate Institute, and were compiled together in different subjects by Manchu literati officials. Together with inter-state documents, these archives became original sources of the later Veritable Records and other official history compilations. Although the Monthly Archives had long been considered missing, these archives could be closely related to the three early Veritable Records compiled in 1636 and Shunzhi reign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on a series of recently disclosed Chinese archival documents on the Korean War and recently published memoirs of Chinese officials directly involved in the war. It attempts to piece together a picture of China and Mao Zedong's involvement in the Korean War, a picture that had a strong inclination to participate in the war, and that its participation had a lasting effect on the subsequent modernization of the People's Liberation Army. But this paper analyzes in greater detail the continuity between China's participation in the war and the Chinese Revolution, and the process of military preparations before its participation. The paper also meticulously traces the process of decision-making by the Chinese leadership from the execution of the First and Second Campaigns until the commencement of the armistice talks, thereby identifying China's diplomatic intents in anticipation of the international political climate in the post-ceasefire era, and the specific role China played in the drawing of the 38th parallel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-term baselines on biodiversity change through time are crucial to inform conservation decision-making in biodiversity hotspots, but environmental archives remain unavailable for many regions. Extensive palaeontological, zooarchaeological and historical records and indigenous knowledge about past environmental conditions exist for China, a megadiverse country experiencing large-scale biodiversity loss, but their potential to understand past human-caused faunal turnover is not fully assessed. We investigate a series of complementary environmental archives to evaluate the quality of the Holocene–historical faunal record of Hainan Island, China's southernmost province, for establishing new baselines on postglacial mammalian diversity and extinction dynamics. Synthesis of multiple archives provides an integrated model of long-term biodiversity change, revealing that Hainan has experienced protracted and ongoing human-caused depletion of its mammal fauna from prehistory to the present, and that past baselines can inform practical conservation management. However, China's Holocene–historical archives exhibit substantial incompleteness and bias at regional and country-wide scales, with limited taxonomic representation especially for small-bodied species, and poor sampling of high-elevation landscapes facing current-day climate change risks. Establishing a clearer understanding of the quality of environmental archives in threatened ecoregions, and their ability to provide a meaningful understanding of the past, is needed to identify future conservation-relevant historical research priorities. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'The past is a foreign country: how much can the fossil record actually inform conservation?' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The moderate spatial resolution and high temporal resolution of MODIS imagery make it an ideal resource for time series surface water monitoring and mapping. We used MODIS MOD09Q1 surface reflectance archive images to create an Inland Surface Water Dataset in China (ISWDC), which maps water bodies larger than 0.0625 km 2 within the land mass of China for the period 2000–2016, with 8 d temporal and 250 m spatial resolution. We assessed the accuracy of the ISWDC by comparing it with the national land cover derived surface water data and global surface water (GSW) data. The results show that the ISWDC is closely correlated with the national reference data with coefficient of determination (R2) greater than 0.99 in 2000, 2005, and 2010, while the ISWDC possesses very good consistency, very similar change dynamics, and similar spatial patterns in different regions with the GSW dataset. The ISWDC dataset can be used for studies on the inter-annual and seasonal variation of the surface water systems. It can also be used as reference data for verification of the other surface water dataset and as an input parameter for regional and global hydro-climatic models. The ISWDC data are available at: 10.5281/zenodo.2616035. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the use of photography by Chinese adoptees searching for their birth parents using the website Baobei Hui Jia. The website facilitates birth parent searches for individuals adopted from China both domestically and internationally. I theorize the use of baby photography and selfie photography by adoptees that create a digital archive defined by the shared experience of the birth parent search. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section offers news briefs of relevance to serials librarians as of August 2016. Topics mentioned include the launch of Taylor & Francis' online hub for scholars TandFChina.com, the 2017 UKSG annual conference to be held on April 10-12 in Harrogate, England, and academic publisher Adam Matthew's partnership with the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana.

In China, Zou Zhe (Memorials to the Throne, or Palace Memorials), an official communication to the emperors of China by local officials, offers an opportunity to reconstruct the spatial-temporal distributions of droughts at a high-resolution. A 223-year, 1689–1911, time series of drought events was reconstructed in this study based on 2494 pieces of Zou Zhe. The results show that: 1) on the temporal scale, the drought affected areas, i.e., number of affected counties, showed three peak periods during the last 223 years and nine extreme drought years with more than 300 counties affected have been identified; 2) on the spatial scale, there existed three drought-prone areas in China, i.e., Gansu province and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in Northwest China, Shandong, Hebei, and Henan provinces and Tianjin in the North China, and Anhui and Jiangsu provinces in Jianghuai area, respectively; 3) the drought-prone areas have been expanding from North China to South China since the second half of 19th century; 4) on the seasonal scale, summer witnessed the largest number of drought events. Meanwhile, the uncertainties of the results were also discussed, i.e. what caused the spatial-temporal distribution of drought. The results of this study can be used to mitigate the adverse effects of extreme weather events on food increasing and stable production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the recent development of energy efficiency strategies in Chinese archives and library buildings. Since architectural design and construction have a significant impact on interior temperature and humidity, many approaches have been used to meet temperature and humidity standards and to increase energy efficiency. These approaches include, but are not limited to, the use of thermal insulation and heat preservation composite materials, and the strategic design of doors and windows. This article describes the application of energy-efficient techniques including exterior wall thermal insulation systems, energy efficiency doors and windows, the double-pane windows technique, house thermal insulation and heat preservation techniques, solar energy systems, as well as air-conditioning systems with ground or water source heat pumps. This article also discusses comprehensive ways to increase energy efficiency in archives and library buildings, such as ventilation, greenhouse techniques, and the utilization of the surrounding environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a part of the archival heritage of Albert Grünwedel -- his letters to S. F. Oldenburg, devoted to the exploration of Eastern Turkestan at the beginning of the 20th century. Grünwedel gives some important characteristics to the ways of studying of Buddhist art in Central Asia, describes the state of several monuments in Turfan; his information completes the history of cooperation of German and Russian expeditions. Several documents shed some more light on the conditions of the division of the areas of excavations between German and Russian expeditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a translation of an article that reconsiders the controversy surrounding the Satō Eisaku Cabinet's China policy from 1970 to 1972. Previous studies have not focused sufficiently on how top officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs discussed China policy during this era. Based on recently declassified but still fragmentary Japanese diplomatic documents, this article, by carefully organizing these fragments and then comparing them with previously published secondary sources and declassified US diplomatic documents, uncovers historical facts of central importance for understanding Japan's postwar foreign policy. In particular, this article finds that the Foreign Ministry failed to formulate a strategic response to the drastic transformation of the international situation in the early 1970s, thereby indicating that discord within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party was not the only reason for Japan's delayed and reactive response. It also finds that the Ministry decided to establish diplomatic relations with China and severe relations with Taiwan as early as immediately after the Taiwanese government was expelled from the U.N. in October 1971, even though Japan waited for nearly another year before acting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The international development of human embryonic stem cell research has become closely tied to global bioethics, which places moral responsibility on stem cell researchers. This article argues that the development of bioethical regulation of human embryonic stem cell research is better understood by approaching the institutionalisation of bioethics in terms of risk perceptions of stem cell scientists. Eschewing approaches that understand bioethical risk as a mere matter of morality or as a social construct, this article emphasises the materiality and strategic reasoning of bioethical views on risks associated with human embryonic stem cell research. Such an approach allows the identification of forms of risk rooted in the everyday practice of Chinese human embryonic stem cell research, including moral risk (as a violation of cultural values), material risk (in relation to the distribution of material resources and wealth), political risk (in terms of the political economy of bioethics and public debate) and reputational risk (in terms of personal and national honour). Although this analysis builds on Tom Horlick-Jones's concept of risk signatures of new technologies, which emphasise the capacities of different technologies to engender and delimit the particular social and cultural interpretations of the risks they generate, the article reveals the existence of a certain global awareness among stem cell scientists of risk signatures. They display a creative and strategic awareness regarding the possible opportunities and constraints the risk signature of human embryonic stem cell research affords in their particular institutional context compared to those of others abroad and at home in different environments. The existence of this form of reflexivity requires recognition and methodological accommodation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the archival history produced by the Spanish diplomatic representation in China. The author discusses the institutional history of Spanish representation in China from the early 19th century until the 1970s and notes the impact on the archives of the rupture of diplomatic relations in 1946. He considers how the archives were recovered from Shanghai, China, taken to Taipei (Taiwan) in the early 1950s and later included in Spain's Archivo General de la Administración (General Archive of the Administration).

The article discusses the reconstruction of climate using a variety of historical documents in China. It is stated that there were 14 published temperature series by different studies that were examined for coherence and mutual consistency. The analyses revealed that for the individual time series on the 10-year time scales, 57 of the 91 correlation coefficients attain the implication level of 99%. Furthermore, consistency also show when equating the reconstructions with other available natural climate change indicators.

Presents several documents relating to the political and economic affairs in China.

Explores Chinese culture in the Chinese Museum in Boston, Massachusetts in 1845-47. Difficulty of the construction of an accurate image of the culture by textual means alone; Result of visual engagement with collected artifacts; Commercial colonization in the history of U.S. relations with China.