About the Collection
Established in 1990, the UC Irvine Libraries’ East Asian (EA) Collection serves the needs of the EA research and teaching community on campus, which currently includes some 30 core faculty members and their graduate students who are affiliates with the Center for Asian Studies and mainly from the departments of history, art history, anthropology, East Asian languages and literatures, comparative literature, film and media, drama, sociology, political science. It is also open to any other faculty, students and local residents with a need for EA materials. In a relatively short span of 30 years, the Collection has grown from the original 8,000 Chinese books acquired from a noted historian in China to nearly 120,000 volumes in Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages as of June 30, 2019, making it one of the fastest growing Collections of this kind in the nation and the largest East Asian Collection in Orange County.
In addition to the rapid growth in quantity, the quality of the Collection has also been built up through the diversity and strength of its subject, format, chronological and geographic coverage. Over the years, with generous and continued support from library administrations, faculty, as well as generous friends and partners of the Libraries, we have acquired rich resources in modern East Asian literature and history, and Chinese classics, including many unique items as showcased below.
Locations
Primarily located on the first floor of Langson Library, EA Collection resources can also be found in other library locations or online, as shown below:
Access and Circulation
The majority of EA print materials is accessible during normal Langson Library hours With a few exceptions (e.g., films and special collection materials), the Collection is open to all, and is heavily used by UCI faculty and students, as well as users from other institutions and local communities. EA Collection resources are also discoverable through Library Search and Melvyl.
As with other materials in the library, a valid library card is required to borrow EA materials. UC faculty, staff and students may use their campus ID as a library card. Non-UC community users may purchase a fee-based card. For inquiries about getting a library card and borrowing EA books, please contact the Langson Library Check-out Desk in the lobby area at (949)824-6842 or circadm@uci.edu, or visit the website.
User Services
The Research Librarian for Asian Studies, Dr. Ying Zhang, is available to help users with their research needs concerning the collection. Dr. Zhang can be reached during weekdays (Monday – Friday) from 9am to 5pm in her office (Room 466 Langson Library), by phone (949-824-0489), via email (yingz@uci.edu) or through online chat . However, appointments are highly recommended so as to ensure service availability.
Last updated September 15, 2014 [Chinese/Japanese]
Last updated August 1, 2017 [Korean]