Rare Chinese books back to homeland in digital form

A Web site hosting digital copies of rare Chinese books collected in the Harvard-Yenching Library was opened in the National Library of China on Sept. 8 and the first batch consists of more than 200 rare editions.

Promoting the image-based and digital forms of rare editions to permanently preserve the heritages of Chinese civilization is one of the most important purposes of the "Chinese ancient books conservation plan".

The digitization and network integration of these rare editions that are scattered abroad is also a significant process to realize these editions' transformation from printed version to digital ones.

Since the protection plan was conducted in 2007, the National Library of China has successfully taken many Chinese rare editions back to their homeland through publishing, micrographics and digitization.

By Wang Qianyuanxue, People's Daily Online