Mindi Zhang

Zhang's dissertation explores how Chinese research libraries institutionalized new practices and technologies for organizing, recording, and sharing classical texts during China's empire-to-nation transition during the first half of the twentieth century. In this period, China's textual heritage was reconceptualized as research material for national history and culture, a process of critical scholarly re-evaluation in which research libraries played a significant role. Tracing the formation and operation of these institutions, the dissertation also charts two-way transpacific exchange between China and the United States: while the first generation of Chinese librarians were generally trained in the U.S. and adapted American library methods to China, they also contributed to the growth of American Sinological collections through their bibliographical knowledge and book-collecting networks.

Drawing on multiple archives of libraries in China and the U.S., traditional Chinese catalogs and bibliographies, and private correspondence and diaries, Zhang charts this two-way transnational history of libraries by tracing the working of major institutions including the Boone Library School, the National Beiping Library, the Harvard-Yenching Library, and the Library of Congress, as well as the activities of key figures associated with them.