Speaker: Jin Shen | 沈津, Specially Appointed Expert, Sun Yat-sen University Library; specially invited professor, Institute for the Preservation and Study of Chinese Ancient Books, Fudan University

Many libraries in North America hold rare books from the Ming Dynasty, with especially notable collections at the Library of Congress and the Harvard-Yenching Library. This lecture introduces and analyzes the general situation and collection history of Ming rare books held in North American libraries. It uses examples from collections such as the Harvard-Yenching Library to illustrate the overall distribution, main categories and distinctive characteristics of these rare Ming editions preserved in North America.

This program will be delivered in Chinese with live simultaneous English interpretation  provided by Yu Xuan Tay, Ph.D. student of Buddhist Studies at UCLA.

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Shen Jin, a native of Hefei, Anhui Province, was born in Tianjin in 1945. He graduated from the Department of Library Science at Wuhan University in 1966. While working at the Shanghai Library, he studied bibliography and textual scholarship under Director Gu Tinglong. In 1986, he was awarded the rank of Research Librarian.
He has served as a council member of the Library Society of China, a member of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Director of the Special Collections Department at the Shanghai Library and Head of the Rare Book Room at the Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University. After retirement, he held positions as a specially appointed expert at Sun Yat-sen University Library and as a specially appointed professor at the Institute for the Preservation and Study of Chinese Ancient Books at Fudan University.

His works total approximately 8 million characters and include A Descriptive Catalogue of Chinese Rare Books in the Harvard-Yenching Library at Harvard University, A Chronological Biography of Weng Fanggang, An Extended Chronological Biography of Gu Tinglong, Selected Works of Shen Jin and Fuli ji, among others.