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  • BLOG HOME
  • About
    • Author Profiles
    • Five Things You Need to Know About the Library
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Monthly Archives

August 2021

    Searching for Chinese Language Resources

    by Guest Author August 24, 2021
    written by Guest Author

    By David Sulz, Public Service Librarian

    You can access tens of thousands of Chinese-language items through University of Alberta Library, many of which are not on the open internet. We have physical and electronic items; historic and recent; scholarly and popular non-fiction; poetry and fiction; newspapers and magazines; music and film; art and photography; and even primary source documents. 

    We collect them for everyone from fluent Chinese speakers, to language learners, and even those with no language ability but who enjoy international film, music and art.

    Finding them is the fun part (if you include “challenge” in your definition of “fun”). 

    First, where to look.

    Many of our 1600 specialised search databases have some or many Chinese items. Here are a few:  

    • “Search the library” has a variety of books and articles and “publication types”, but only searches a small portion of our resources.
      • Enter a search term in English or Chinese (or other languages) then choose the language filter on the results page. 
      • To browse more randomly, click on advanced search then choose Chinese under language (without entering any search terms). 
      • Use facets on the left to select a specific location (e.g. Rutherford or Bruce Peel Special collections), or a discipline-specific database, a certain publication type, or others.
    • Audio and video subject guide
      • See the “streaming…” tab (e.g. Kanopy, Criterion on Demand, Smithsonian Global Sound) or the “physical …” tab (for DVDs and CDs) 
    • Some interesting/unusual collections (more here: East Asian Studies)
      • China Academic Journals (CAJ, CNKI) (academic sources)
      • Airiti Library: Taiwan Electronic Periodicals Service
      • Scripta Sinica: Classical Chinese Studies 
      • Chinese Cultural Revolution Database 
      • Siku Quanshu (the largest single assembly of Chinese classical works)
      • PressReader (recent newspapers and magazines, select “catalog” then languages menu)
      • Shen Bao (newspaper)
      • Late Qing and Republican-Era Chinese Newspapers
    A digitized copy of Gong ping bao (公評報), 1933.08.18, found in
  • Late Qing and Republican-Era Chinese Newspapers
  • Next, how to search

    Here are a few general principles to keep in mind.

    1. Search engines search the information in an item record and Chinese sources might be recorded in Chinese characters or with roman (English) letter transcriptions, or both.
    2. Chinese characters might be in traditional style or simplified style
    3. Transcriptions might be in pinyin or Wade-Giles
    4. Chinese doesn’t have spaces between words but catalogue records might 
    5. There are several ways to enter Chinese characters into search engines
      1. Easiest: cut-and-paste characters from a website, email, or  digital copy of a paper (I often get them from English wikipedia articles on Chinese topics).
      2. Keyboard entry: change the language and keyboard settings on your computer (search the internet for how-to instructions).
      3. Some computers allow handwriting entry (trackpad, mouse, stylus)

    As an example (and here comes the “fun” part), say you were looking for the Dao De Ching (popular text on the philosophy of Daoism) in our “search the library” box. Just the simplified Chinese characters 道德经 gives 1479 results.

    • Conveniently, English wikipedia gives many character/transcription variations.
    • The traditional characters 道德經 give 59716 results but using quotation marks to specify all three characters must appear in that order (i.e. “道德經”) focuses in on 1611 results.
    • The pinyin transcription “Dàodé Jīng” (without using the tone marks for searching) gives 858 results but “dao de jing” gives another 1852 results while “daodejing” gives 1210 more.   
    • The Wade-Giles transcription, “Tao Te Ching” gives 3665 results while “taoteching” gives another 52.

    A fairly complete search incorporating all of these might look like:

    “道德经” OR “道德經” OR “daode jing” OR “dao de jing” OR “daodejing” OR “tao te ching” OR “taoteching”

    This gives 5984 results in our “search the library” box, which, you’ll remember, is just one place to search. By the way, not all search engines let you use boolean AND/OR (nor other techniques like truncation or proximity), so you might have to do a bunch of single searches.

    Now that we’ve accounted for probably all the possible combinations, we could narrow by language to Chinese. Interestingly, there are 3 choices for Chinese language in these results pulled from many different search engines: Chinese (490), 繁體中文 (287), and 簡體中文 (173). 

    Alternatively, we might try the subject term “taoism” which is common to many of the titles we found above to find other works on the topic – but that’s a whole other approach (ask me sometime if you dare).

    This is probably more than enough for a “brief” overview of finding Chinese language items through our library. Obviously, it can be pretty complex depending on how thorough you want to be. 

    The key message is: don’t be shy about asking questions. No one in the library is an “expert” per se (this isn’t a Chinese library after all) but we do enjoy exploring along with you and sharing our expertise in figuring out how different tools work.  

    One last thought. We have thousands of items in other languages, including Japanese and Korean, for which many of the ideas above can be adapted. 

    Happy searching, 

    David Sulz, academic librarian.

    If you need help looking for resources, whether they be in English, Chinese or another language, please reach out and Ask Us!

    August 24, 2021 0 comment
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  • Celebrating Chinese Culture | Honouring Tea, Part II

    by Junelle Mah August 19, 2021
    by Junelle Mah August 19, 2021

    Welcome to Part II of Honouring Tea in our University of Alberta Library’s month-long focus on China and Chinese culture. In a world of chaos, nothing comforts me more than the traditional process of brewing Chinese tea. It’s a methodical and thoughtful routine that is as warm and soothing to my soul as it is to my body. This quiet and meditative ritual helps me connect me to my Chinese culture, and…

  • Celebrating Chinese Culture | Honouring Tea, Part I

    by Junelle Mah August 13, 2021
    by Junelle Mah August 13, 2021

    As the University of Alberta Library highlights China and Chinese culture in this month’s blog, I feel very fortunate to write a two-part special on Chinese tea. Not only do I get to venture into my favourite section of Rutherford’s stacks (fourth floor, call range GV 2907), but I get to transfer a piece of my personal history into written word. Part One will introduce Chinese tea, as well as some of…

  • We’re celebrating Chinese culture this month!

    by Erin Sanderman August 5, 2021
    by Erin Sanderman August 5, 2021

    We’re celebrating Chinese culture this August, here on the Library’s news blog. Let’s kick things off with few fun facts about China and Chinese culture. We hope this inspires you to discover more interesting tidbits or do a deeper dive into aspects of China and Chinese culture. Here are a few subject guides to get you started. East Asian Studies Background Reference Resources Religious Studies There’s more to come on the blog…

  • Library Course Materials & Reading List Service – Create Your List Today

    by Guest Author August 3, 2021
    by Guest Author August 3, 2021

    This post was written by Access Services Coordinator, CJ de Jong Check out the Library’s Reading List Service and start your list in minutes! A carefully curated reading list aids your students accessing authoritative and useful information for your lectures. Now, create a list with books, articles, videos, webpages, and other online content that can easily integrate into your eClass course and connect to library resources where available.  These lists can: measure…

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