The Library and Archive

THE LIBRARY
THE LIBRARY HAS ITS ORIGINS in the collections assembled from 1937 onwards by Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-Djen, from sources both in China and the Western world. It was originally intended for the furtherance of the research on which the Science and Civilisation in China (SCC) project is based. It now holds around 40,000 titles. No other collection of the kind exists in the Western world, offering such a unique mixture of primary and secondary works in Chinese, English, Korean, Japanese and other languages on the history of traditional East Asian science, technology and medicine. Besides the holdings of books, periodicals, offprints and manuscripts, it also contains a large quantity of archival and iconographic material in the form of letters, notes, photographs, maps, etc. which will be of singular benefit to future research in these fields.

THE COLLECTION REFLECTS Dr. Needham’s varied interests and the way he worked, and thus the primary focus is on the history of science, technology and medicine in pre-modern China. Since the early 1990’s the collection has been strengthened with a great many new purchases and donations of Chinese publications. Though all areas of the history of Chinese ST&M are covered, it is particularly strong on the history of Chinese mathematics, astronomy, medicine and archaeology. As the field has boomed and new trends have developed, environmental history and ST&M in modern China have also become a focus. Coverage of the history of ST&M in other parts of East Asia, such as Korea and Japan, are not as extensive, and we are endeavouring to develop these parts of the collection as quickly as funds available and the generosity of donors will allow.

THE ARCHIVE
THE INSTITUTE HAS RETAINED the extensive archives relating to Dr. Needham’s preparation of the volumes of SCC, and his other China-related publications, for which a very detailed item-level catalogue was created thanks to a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2004. The archive also holds voluminous records of Neeham’s many visits to China, records regarding the establishment and management of the Institute, as well as some recent donations of archives from individual SCC collaborators and organisations in which Needham played a key role. Since 2018, our part-time archivist, Dr. Rosalind Grooms, has been working on projects funded by the Wellcome Trust and Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation to catalogue selected parts of these rich collections.