East Asian

The University of Melbourne’s East Asian Collection comprises one of the largest repositories of materials in Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages available in the Southern Hemisphere. The collection is divided into two parts: Rare materials (available via the Baillieu Library Reading Room) and General materials (able to be borrowed from the ERC Library).

The General East Asian Collection holds over 100,000 contemporary print books and periodicals in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, focusing mainly on the humanities and social sciences. It also holds extensive online resources fully accessible to University of Melbourne researchers and students.

The Rare East Asian Collection holds over 20,000 items ranging from the 17th to the 21st century, on topics such as history, literature, fine arts, traditional medicine, religion, linguistics, education, gender studies, politics, architecture, craft and design. It consists of books, scrolls, realia, stone rubbings, and ephemera, and is home to four major collections: The Harry Simon Collection, The Thomas Chong Collection, The R.F. Price Collection, and The Valery Garrett Collection.

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The collections are accessible via the Baillieu Library Reading Room.