With the partial financial support from the Korea Foundation, we have now subscribed to 6 Korean databases of e‐books, e‐journals, bibliographies and newspaper archives covering a wide range of subject areas. The initiative was in response to the emerging Korean Studies programmes in the department of Asian Studies. These databases are all listed in the Databases by Subject for East Asian Studies.
Author Archives: stong
The Regional Sections (Showa Era) of the Yomiuri Shimbun
We have been offered a free trial of the Regional Sections (Showa Era, 昭和の地域版) of the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun which we subscribe to:
The trial is valid until 8th February 2018.
Yomiuri Shimbun is indexed in the Databases A-Z list as Yomidas Rekishikan which provides access to this newspaper.
The section contains digital images of 2.76 million pages from 46 prefectures nationwide dating from 1933 to 2001. Click here to see the content coverage by regions and periods. The English user guide for Yomidas Rekishikan can be downloaded from here.
Article examples from the Regional Sections:
Nikkei Asian Review through Factiva and Nexis UK
Some colleagues and students have asked about online access to Nikkei Asian Review, a weekly magazine in English published by Japan’s leading business and information company which provides timely corporate, economic news from Japan and the Asian region.
The good news is that the full text of Nikkei Asian Review is fully covered in two news source databases that the Library is subscribing to. Factiva provides full text content of this publication from 21 Nov. 2013 onwards, and in Nexis UK from 3 June 1980 onwards. Update schedule is same day as publication. Both databases are indexed in the Library’s Databases A-Z list (www.ed.ac.uk/is/databases-a-z).
Trial of a huge range of Chinese resources from Superstar
The Library has arranged a free trial, until 31st October 2017, of several important full-text Chinese resources from the Superstar company (超星公司) which is provider of our currently subscribed databases Duxiu and Chinamass, both of which are in the Databases A-Z list. These resources range from Chinese classics, pre-1949 periodicals and books, to local gazetteers and academic journals since 1949. They are accessible on three different platforms:
- Special collections (专题图书馆 and 超星专题库). These two large sets of resources can be accessed on the Chinamaxx platform. . It contains a vast amount of Chinese classics and books on special subjects. Superstar historical documents (超星文史资料) is under a separate section and may be of special interest for regional studies. The following resources are available:
四库全书 (We have this database)全宋文 (We have a print collection of 360 volumes in the East Asian Collection, Main Library)
古今图书集成 (We have this database)
- Superstar journals (超星期刊) which can be accessed on the Duxiu database platform. This resource contains over 6,500 full text post-1949 Chinese journals. Please also remember that we are subscribing to two Chinese journals already: China Academic Journals, and China Online Journals, both of which are in the Database list.
- Dacheng gu zhi dui (大成故纸堆). This is a huge database containing several series: 老旧刊(pre-1949, 7491 periodicals)，民国图书(39,950 books published before 1949)，《申报》(1872-1942)，古方志集(3566) ，党史(208 Communist Party publications before 1949)， 《顺天时报》(1907-1930)，《大美晚报》(1943-1946).This database is to be accessed from: www.dachengdata.com on the University network.
Feedback about these trials are welcome.
Japanese e-books in EBSCOhost eBook Collection
The University Library has for the first time purchased some Japanese e-books which are available to read on the EBSCOhost eBook Collection platform. Once on the platform, click “Choose Databases” at the top of the page, and then select both “Audiobook Collection” and “eBook Collection”, close the “Choose Databases” page, and then search for Japanese titles. Alternatively, just go to the pre-selected Japanese e-books list by clicking here.
At the moment there are 56 Japanese e-books in total but the number will grow.
70,000 high-quality images from National Palace Museum in Taipei
BBC News reported yesterday that the National Palace Museum in Taipei has placed 70,000 high-quality electronic images in a free-to-download archive so that online users can enjoy its exhibitions. It also provides a database for users to download information on the history and use of the cultural artefacts.
See more on http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-40594287
This BBC news page leads to the detailed information in Chinese at: http://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1730606
Korean newspapers online
The Library has arranged a free trial of two digitised Korean newspapers, Choson Ilbo Archive and Dong-A Ilbo Archive. The digitised full-text content of both newspapers date back to 1920, each containing over 3 million articles. They are searchable by keyword, full text, date, and so on.
To access the trials, please follow the links below:
Choson Ilbo Archive: http://srchdb1.chosun.com/pdf/i_archive/
Dong-A Ilbo Archive: http://news.donga.com/Pdf
Trial ends on 30 Sept 2017 for Choson Ilbo Archive and 31 Aug 2017 for Dong-A Ilbo Archive respectively.
This is the first time we have access to Korean e-resources. As the Korean Studies programme unfolds, there will be more library activities in this area in the near future.
Digital library of pre-modern Japanese works for open access
The National Institute of Japanese Literature (Kokubunken) has made their new新日本古典籍総合データベース/Database of Pre-Modern Japanese Works (tentative edition) freely available at: https://kotenseki.nijl.ac.jp/ (Japanese interface) and https://kotenseki.nijl.ac.jp/?ln=en (English interface).
The database, built out of Kokusho Sōmokuroku, a Japanese reference book published by Iwanami Shoten, and the largest of its kind, contains about 300,000 of 500,000 entries listed in the original book, along with digitized versions of materials referred to by the entries. It also allows one action search across repositories of multiple institutions.
For more information, please see the “Project to Build an International Collaborative Research Network for Pre-modern Japanese Texts (NIJL-NW project)” websites at:
Free access to optional contents of JapanKnowledge
The following contents will temporarily be accessible on the JapanKnowledge platform between 1 June and 30 June 2017:
1. Encyclopedia of Japanese Historical Place Names http://japanknowledge.com/en/contents/rekishi/index.html
2. Fuzoku Gaho http://japanknowledge.com/en/contents/fuzokugaho/index.html
3. Oriental Economist http://japanknowledge.com/en/contents/orientaleconomist/index.html
Please contact shenxiao.tong@ed.ac.uk if you have any feedback.
How to make good use of the NDL Digital Collections for Japanese Studies
The National Diet Library of Japan has released an online training course on how to make good use of their NDL Digital Collections for Japanese Studies outside Japan. The course is delivered as a video in Japanese with English subtitles.
This course provides an introduction to the features of the NDL Digital Collections and how to search its contents from outside Japan. The content of this course is based on a presentation made at the EAJRS Conference in Bucharest held on September 16, 2016.
Anybody can take the courses without registration. Go to http://training.ndl.go.jp/course/under.html?id=58&lang=en. Please ignore the button labelled “This course is fully booked”. Move down to the bottom of the page and click the button labelled “take a course without registering“.