New trial: Chinese News Data Service Platform 人大当代报刊资源服务平台
Princeton users now have trial access to Chinese News Data Service Platform 人大当代报刊资源服务平台.
The database gives access to more than 1,000 titles of Chinese newspapers. Coverage differs from title to title, but mostly starts from the mid-2010s. The database includes, national, provincial, regional and local newspapers as well as trade specific newspapers and party newspapers.
Access is available via https://login.ezproxy.princeton.edu/login?url=https://cloudread.aheading.com/home
Trial period: until May 07, 2025

Princeton users currently have trial access to part four of this database. The new part adds 2,000 pre-modern local gazetteers dating from the Song to the Republican period with a strong focus on the Qing. There are many ways of searching this full-text database, including by region, title or period, but at the same time, the form of the original, including maps or tables, is preserved, and shown side-by side.

Trial access to part four until March 28, 2025.

We have only one concurrent user for this database, and often demand is high; so please logout of the database when finished, in order to open that slot for the next person as soon as possible.

Lidai shiwenji zongku

The Lidai shiwenji zongku 歷代詩文集總庫 (previously known as Lidai bieji ku 歷代別集庫) consists of the collected poetry writings of individuals. Currently Princeton users have access to 8,000 titles of the full range of pre-Ming, Ming, and Qing authors. As all Airusheng/Erudition databases, the texts have been carefully digitized and checked for optimal full-text searching. Please select “ancient classics” from the first landing page, then choose 歷代詩文集總庫 you will see «Ming qian», «Ming», «Qing shang», and «Qing xia» highlighted.

The trial includes the newly published 總集編 that gives access to 1,000 anthologies of a broader scope.

Trial access to the 總集編 part until March 28, 2025.

We have only one concurrent user for this database, and often demand is high; so please logout of the database when finished, in order to open that slot for the next person as soon as possible.

iRead eBooks 華藝中文電子書  (e-books from Taiwan)
URL: https://www.airitibooks.com/
Reading access to about 2,000 academic e-books from Taiwan mostly published in the last 5 years. Online reading mode, printing of single pages. Online lending requires personal account and additional software. Pop-ups need to be allowed.
Trial has ended. Access to individual titles in this collection can be requested. Please contact the Chinese Studies Librarian if access is needed.

CNKI e-Book platform
This trial gives access to almost 11,000 Chinese E-Books from a number of different publishers from mainland China. All of the E-Books can be read online and can also downloaded as PDF. Despite the difficult circumstances, we ask readers to use the PDF download option with moderation. The East Asian Library will make sure to arrange long term access to the contents that is needed and is looking forward to any recommendations for perpetual access.
URL: http://book.oversea.cnki.net/CCGBWEB/Book/Navi
Trial has ended. Access to individual titles in this collection can be requested. Please contact the Chinese Studies Librarian if access is needed.

The Academia Sinica Scripta Sinica database with titles digitized by the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica, Taipei, has greatly improved its interface. Read the help screens for more information on its new features. Since the database is now UTF-8, there is no longer a need for downloading any additional font. For a listing of titles included, click on 書目瀏覽, and then search by title with nothing in the search box.

Apabi Digital Library is a collection Chinese e-Books. Records for individual books are in the main catalog, but you may also browse Princeton's collection using the link above and choose "dianji tushu". Books are viewed in a special reader application with many useful features for browsing, organizing, and marking up text. The reader may be installed from the link below (It is preinstalled on the public computers in the East Asian Library.)

Choose the tupianku 图片库 tab to use.

This collection is highly organized; the top-level categories (called “museums”) are Chinese art, calligraphy, folk art, red (i.e. socialist) art, unearthed objects, old photographs, ancient design, modern graphic design, historical costumes, rare book illustrations, classical painting manuals, typography, and pattern design. Each museum has “rooms.” The database contains over 200,000 images; the largest categories are old photographs (75,000), Chinese art (35,000), rare book illustrations (30,000), folk art (13,000) and calligraphy (12,000). Short descriptions of images, as well as the usual image functions including scrolling through an image, are provided. “High resolution” is up to 300 dpi. Images can be downloaded after individual registration. Suggestions for related images are provided.

While the China Digital Library, of which this is a part, has an English interface, very little of this particular database is available in romanization or English; thus, knowledge of Chinese is required.

One can search all divisions at once, or separately; main search criteria are by image title, artist, period, place of origin of the work, and current location. In addition, each museum can be browsed using criteria appropriate to that museum:

  • Chinese art by category (portraiture, landscape, bronzes, textiles, architecture...), period, origin, current location
  • Calligraphy by style ( xingshu , caoshu , ...), period, origin, current location
  • Folk art by category ( nianhua , shadow figures, paper cuts, clothing...), subject (story people, gods...), regional style
  • Red (i.e. socialist) art by category (propaganda, movie posters, book covers, oil paintings...), subject (leaders, model figures, women, children...), period (1930-), and topics (Anti-Japanese Resistance, Great Leap Forward...)
  • Unearthed objects by category (ceramics and jade only), period, province
  • Old photographs by region, subject (history, customs, medicine, religion...), period (19th c. -)
  • Ancient design by category (eating utensils, ritual vessels, drinking utensils, weapons, furniture, musical instruments, seals...; 25 categories in total), period, material (gold, silver, bamboo, enamel...)
  • Modern graphic design by category (advertisements, posters, book covers, slogans...), industry (clothing, movies and entertainment, hygiene... ), subject (markets, theater, Westernized imports, technology...)
  • Historical costumes by categories (commoners, court, army, underwear, advertisements...) and period
  • Rare book illustrations by category (portraiture, landscape, stories...), period, editions (collotype, woodblock...)
  • Classical painting manuals by category (landscape, birds...), period, topics ( Sanxi tang , Jiezi yuan ...)
  • Typography by classification (pictorial, geometric...), topics (life, brand logo, struggles...), period (1930-)
  • Pattern design by classification (abstract, modified traditional, landscapes...), topics (entertainment, congratulatory, propaganda...)
  • Please note: The producer of this database has seized support of the database. Currently access is only available to pre-2017 content.

    Choose the shuzi baozhi 数字报纸 tab to use.

    Newspapers available include the following: Renmin ribao Haiwai ban 人民日报∶海外版  (2010-), Wenhuibao 文汇报 (2012-), Zhongguo funü bao 中国妇女报 (2009-), Zhongguo wenhuabao 中国文化报 (2008-), Zhongguo jingji shibao 中国经济时报 (2012-),, Chongqing ribao 重庆日报 (2008-), Tianjin ribao 天津日报 (2008-), Yangchen wanbao 羊城晚报 (2007-), Neimenggu chenbao 内蒙古晨报 (2008-), and Bingtuan ribao 兵团日报 (2017-)  plus 13 others.

    Please note: The producer of this database has seized support of the database. Currently access is only available to pre-2017 content.

    Nanfang zhoumo 南方周末 and Zhongguo Wenwu bao 中国文物报 (2007-) are no longer available on this database. The East Asian Library has a local installation of an electronic archive to Zhongguo Wenwu bao 中国文物报 that covers 1985-2018 and is available for local use on a specific computer on library premises.

    This database has two parts. The first part called 史地經典文庫 collects full-text historical textual material on the Chinese borderlands dating from the Ming Dynasty to the Republic in the punctuated editions by Zhonghua shuju. The second part 邊疆史料文庫 gives access to Republican monographs, periodicals, government gazettes and other documents on the history of the border regions.

    The original printed text is displayed side-by-side with a fully searchable digital edition of the text for comparison. Downloading is not possible. Copying (with a maximum of 200 characters at a time (after signing in)) is, but only using the pop-up copy function, not the usual browser function.

    To use the database you have to sign in with a user account.

    You have the following two choices:

    1) You can use one of four generic Princeton accounts with the following details

    Username:
    [email protected]
    [email protected]
    [email protected]
    [email protected]

    Password (for all of the 4 accounts above): 123123

    2) You can register a personal account

    To sign in for both options please choose 登录 on the upper left and then switch to 邮箱登录 on the following page (right under the large 登录 button). .

    Please note: This database does currently not fully support the Firefox Browser!

    Books of Modern China (1840-1949) This link opens in a new window
    Collection of 120,000 late Qing and Republican e-books from Shanghai Library including many rare titles. Books are full-text searchable. Database includes author biographies, and cross-references to other Shanghai Library databases (especially for late Qing and Republican journals and newspapers). Especially interesting for literature and cross-cultural studies. Download of single pages is possible. Database clusters similar titles which is especially useful for research on the history of translation of Western literature or scientific knowledge. The database is part of Shanghai Library’s Quanguo baokan suoyin 全国报刊索引.

    CADAL (China Academic Digital Associative Library) is a government-sponsored cooperative project of some 120+ academic libraries (2020), about half of which are from China, to create electronic resources for the use of their patrons. The venture is led by and housed in Zhejiang University, and most major Chinese academic institutions such as Peking, Qinghua, Fudan and Nanjing universities were participants from the beginning. CADAL originally grew out of a China-American Digital Academic Library venture, but only from the mid-2010s  a select group of overseas libraries have received access.

    The major resource created by CADAL is a collection of scanned books, both in and out of copyright: 240 thousand ancient texts (including the Xuxiu siku quanshu 续修四库全书), 180 thousand republican works, 155 thousand republican periodical issues, 40 thousand newspaper issues, 800 thousand post-1949 books, 690 thousand works in Western languages, 13 thousand special collection works, 4 thousand videos, 55 thousand audiobooks and 63 thousand images. The collection is constantly increasing. The titles are not full-text searchable; but tables of contents are provided for easy navigation. Lately CADAL has added some special sections for material connected to the Manchuria Railway 满铁 13 thousand titles, modern local gazetteers 17 thousand, material on overseas Chinese 侨批 50 thousand items, and oracle bones from various institutions including from Princeton scanned with Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) technology.

    (In addition to the e-books database, the navigation bar also gives access to some other resources : calligraphic works ( shufa 书法), a literary timeline ( Zhongguo wenxue biannian shi 中国文学编年史), Chinese medicine ( zhongyiyao 中医药), and Audio ( yinpinku 音频库). Note that the video choice, available only in English, brings one to the main e-books database.)

    Access to the books is dependent on the copyright status of the book: while some free access is available, especially to the ancient texts, access to in-copyright books is restricted to registered users at participant libraries: one borrows parts of books, which need to be returned in order to have them become available to other users. Hence, one first has to register ( zhuce 注册), and in subsequent visits to log-in ( denglu 登录). For this please select 登录/注册 from the upper right of the CADAL home page. To register then click on 快速注册. Please note that it is not necessary to add a mobile phone number 手机号 in order to the register and it is also not necessary to retrieve a verification code if one does not want to connect the personal account to a Chinese mobile phone number. The registration process can be soley finished via a valid email. After registration, the system will ask for an affiliation at the first login. Please choose IP range and select “Princeton University” as your affiliation ( suozai danwei 所在单位) . The system will connect your account to Princeton for 180 days. For this to work you must be either using the system from a university computer (including within the library), or access the database via the library link at the top of this database description.

    Activities one performs when logged-in, including borrowing books, note-taking etc., are visible to all users from search pages etc.: hence, make sure to log-out especially on shared public computers. One is not logged out automatically, even not after days. To log-out, go to one’s personal account page ( registeredname’s CADAL in the English, registeredname CADAL in the Chinese interface), and click on tuichu 推 出. This account page is available in the top navigation bar, and is also the page from where one returns  books, see one’s borrowing history, etc.  (One can choose to set the interface to English, but only a limited number of top-level screens have been translated.)

    Once logged in, and directed to one’s account page, one can perform a simple search in the search box. On the resulting page, one can somewhat refine one’s search by limiting the result to title or author, and by selecting some rough facets of categories (such as ancient books or republican-period books—note that all categories are listed, even if not applicable), tags ( biaoqian 标签 ) or publisher.
    Under a cover image of each result, one can choose to see more details on the book, or decide to read it by clicking on the book. If choosing to read it, one is brought to a reader interface where one can display the table of contents, navigate forward and backward within a book, and change the display from one page to two pages at a time and vice versa. Printing (by right-clicking, one page at a time) does not work very well—it may be better to take screen shots.

    Depending on the copyright status of the book, one will receive a request after viewing a couple of pages to check out the remainder of the chapter ( jieyue 借阅). One receives a message that borrowing was successful (if the item was not borrowed by someone else), and can continue to read.

    To return the chapter to the CADAL library, navigate to the borrowing page ( jieyue in the top navigation bar), where one can see the status of one’s checking in-and-out. Click, if not yet selected, on the weihuan 未还button, and then return chapters by clicking on guihuan 归还 after each chapter one has checked out. And remember to log-out (also possible from this page.)

    One can look at one’s notes, tags, comments, messages etc.  from the navigation bar, and there may be recommendations listed based upon one’s readings.

    The CHANT (CHinese ANcient Texts) databases, compiled under the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS) of the Chinese University of Hong Kong since 1988, give full-text access (single words, phrases and sentence patterns) to all traditional texts from the Pre-Han (pre 220AD) period up to the Six Dynasties (581 AD) (over 30 million characters.) These texts are divided into two databases: Pre-Han & Han (Xian Qin Liang Han), and Six Dynasties (Wei Jin Nanbeichao). During compilation, different versions of the same texts were carefully compared, and modern punctuation was added. Comparisons with other versions, parallel passages, as well as citations found in Leishu are shown in footnotes. CHANT also includes databases of excavated wood/bamboo and silk scripts (the Zhu-jian-bo shu database), oracular inscriptions (the Jiaguwen database, and bronze inscriptions (Jinwen). includes now a database of extant Chinese encyclopedias (Leishu), which includes the titles listed on the spreadsheet below:

    To enter, click first on "dengru wenku", and then on "jigou yonghu dengru" ("For IP user only"; no password is necessary as a Princeton user). Initial navigation until entering each database itself is slow, searching the databases themselves is faster. Then choose your database, and navigate using the buttons and menus provided; each database works differently. Note that not all books are categorized properly (a Six Dynasties work might be found in the Han database, and vice versa), and that one has to search within subcategories the content of which is not always self-explanatory. One cannot usually search all works within a database at one go.

    To use the databases fully, download and install the specialized fonts available from the download page after logging in.

    NOTE: The CHANT Database will not be accesible from 6:00pm HKT 14 February to 9:00am HKT 17 February, 2025

    Princeton's access to the Literature/ History/ Philosophy, Economics/ Politics/ Law, Education/ Social Sciences, and the Electronic and Information Series components of the CNKI includes access to the full-text China Academic Journals database (includes full text and/or full image articles from 8,000+ journals from first issue to date). No usernames or passwords are necessary: the link above opens the database with the English interface; after logging in, you can switch to a Simplified Chinese interface if you prefer. Use the PDF format for downloading articles.

    China Core Newspapers (CCND CNKI) = 中国重要报纸全文数据库