Public Lecture and Exhibition in Memory of Dr. Alfred Kaiming Chiu, founding University Librarian of the CUHK Library

Lecture: Dr. Alfred  Kaiming Chiu: A great pioneer of East Asian Librarianship and founding University Librarian of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library

Speaker: Prof. Huanwen CHENG

               Librarian, Sun Yat-sen University Libraries

Date: Thursday, 24 November 2016

Time: 4:00 pm – 5:15 pm

Venue: User Education Room 1, University Library, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Language: Putonghua

Description:

In 1966 Dr. Alfred Kaiming Chiu (1898 – 1977) became the first University Librarian of The Chinese University of Hong Kong after he retired from Harvard University as the founding Librarian of the Harvard-Yenching Library. During his tenure as the University Librarian he built strong Chinese collections and made a significant effort to gather rare books. Today, CUHK Library’s rare book collection consists of more than 900 titles in 14,000 volumes of Chinese classical books printed in China, Japan and Korea. The collection dates from the Yuan Dynasty (A.D. 1260-1368) to the end of the reign of Emperor Qianlong (A.D. 1795) of the Qing Dynasty. As a scholar-librarian Dr. Chiu built up this pre-eminent collection, including Yi benyi fulu zuanshu 《易本義附錄纂疏》 (1247-1314), Xiaoxue shu jicheng 《小學書集成》(1271-1368) and Tripitaka Koreana《高麗藏》 (1909). Dr. Chiu was also a pioneer establishing a library classification system for Chinese language materials in the United States. The system devised by him is known as the Harvard-Yenching Classification System, and is still in use today. This lecture and exhibition pay tributes to the significant contribution Dr. Chiu made to East Asian librarianship and to CUHK Library in particular.

About the speaker:

Prof. Huanwen Cheng is the Director of Sun Yat-sen University Libraries and professor at the Department of Library and Information Science, Sun Yat-sen University. He is also a member of the Higher Education Library Science and Teaching Advisory Committee, and Steering Committee for Academic Libraries, the Ministry of Education of China.

Exhibition: 23.11.2016 – 6.12.2016

Venue: G/F, University Library

All are welcome

Enquiries: 3943 8740 / spc@lib.cuhk.edu.hk