Collection History

University of Wisconsin–Madison has been engaged in teaching East Asian Studies and collecting relevant materials for almost a century. As part of the University of Wisconsin Madison libraries, the Memorial Library started to collect Chinese materials dated back to 1917, when a Chinese student donated some books and journal titles to the Library. The teaching of Chinese language at Wisconsin began in World War II. The University officially offered Chinese class in 1950. A Department of Chinese was created in the fall of 1962, with a B.A. program; its M.A. and Ph.D programs were established in 1963 and 1964, respectively Japanese was first offered in 1964. In 1965, Memorial Library hired a Chinese Studies librarian. In 1967, the name of the Department of Chinese was officially changed to East Asian Languages and Literature, with the addition of Japanese M.A. and committee Ph.D degrees to the program. In the past few years, the UW Korea Initiative launched to train a new generation of graduates from across all disciplines combine linguistic and cultural competence with both historical and contemporary knowledge about Korea.

In the last several decades, the collection has made remarkable, rapid expansion. The primary goal of the collection in recent years is to support research and teaching in East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin -Madison. In reflection of the programs, its emphasis has been on China and Japan. The Korean Studies collection is currently being developed. We provide access to works from and about all regions of East Asia, namely China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as the diaspora of peoples from East Asia.