Time and Change:
Reflections on the East Asian Library Collections at the Ohio State University
presented at the University of California, Berkeley
Conference on
"Over a Hundred Years of Collecting:
The History of East Asian Collections in North America"
October 18-19, 2007
Maureen H. Donovan
Japanese Studies Librarian and Associate Professor,
The Ohio State University Libraries
First of all, I want to add my congratulations to Peter Zhou and everyone at Berkeley on the opening of the
East Asia Library. In particular, I want to commend the library for working so closely with faculty during
the entire planning process of this project. What a difference that kind of partnership makes! Secondly, I
want to take this opportunity for another kind of thanks. Yesterday Beth Berry mentioned that we had known
each other as undergraduates at Manhattanville College. A true child of the "Cold War" era, I was a Russian
major, having started Russian in high school. I read Tolstoy, Pushkin and other writers in Russian and then
started looking at what other language I might study. That's how I started studying Chinese in my junior year
of college. I came out to Stanford on an NDEA scholarship for Chinese and then went to Columbia
University to continue my Chinese studies, completing an MA in the eventful year of 1973, about which
Vickie Doll already talked. Then I decided to go to library school. It was while I was at Columbia's School
of Library Service that I took a course on sinological bibliography that David Johnson, who was then at
Columbia, taught in Fall 1973. It is quite a coincidence that he is chairing this panel today -- and I would
like to take this opportunity to thank him for teaching me Chinese bibliography. Without that course, it is
very fair to say that I would never have entered into the world of East Asian librarianship at all.
Well, while I was reviewing the history of Ohio State's East Asian library collections during the period
from 1945 through the 1990s in preparation for this talk, a quote from OCLC's Lorcan Dempsey came to
mind: "Then information was scarce and attention was abundant; now information is abundant and attention
is scarce."
In 1880, at a time of extreme information scarcity by today's standards, Ohio State's students chose a
Japanese word, "Makio," as the title for their yearbook, thereby embracing East Asia as a source of
inspiration and establishing a deep and continuing, symbolic link between Ohio State and East Asia. Still,
despite such auspicious beginnings, it was not until the postwar period that East Asian library collecting
began in earnest at Ohio State.
In the early years after World War II, specifically during 1948-1955, a Research Project in Japanese Social
Relations was conducted at Ohio State with funding from the Navy and the Rockefeller Foundation. John
Bennett’s memoir of the field work he conducted in Japan on that project was recently published on the
Libraries’ web site, along with selected photographs that he took in Japan as part of the project. This slide
includes a photograph of Bennett in 1949 along with the very first photograph he took during that research
trip. Bennett's papers, photographs, and other materials now form a special collection within the Rare Books
Library.
Growth of East Asian Studies Beginning in the 1960s
Chinese linguistics was the first field to establish deep and lasting roots at Ohio State. It became a focus of
research and teaching in the Department of Linguistics in the 1960s, led by Professor William Wang, who is
shown on the left in this slide, in a photograph taken during the time he was at Ohio State. Over the years the
focus broadened to include the other languages of East Asia. Library collections in support of these linguistic
studies, as well as works on general linguistics published in East Asian languages have been systematically
developed since then, supporting faculty research and the training of graduate students both in East Asian
Languages and Literatures and in Linguistics.
Acquisition of Maynard Creed Collection
In 1963 Professor Wang was successful in obtaining funding from Ohio State's Mershon Center to
acquire the Maynard Creed collection for the library. Maynard Creed was an independent
scholar/bibliographer and book collector whose goal was to compile a comprehensive bibliography of
Western language works about China and Inner Asia, an updated version of Henri Cordier’s Bibliotheca
Sinica. The Creed Collection comprised 3,300 book and periodical titles, including rare imprints from the
sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as pamphlets, ephemera and rare texts from the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Appointment of Wen-yu Yen
In the year following the acquisition of the Creed collection, namely 1964, Wen-yu Yen -- pictured
here on the right -- was hired to be the first East Asian Librarian at Ohio State. A graduate of Boone Library
School in China, Wen-yu Yen first worked at Beijing University Library under Dr. Yuan Tongli, whom he
followed to National Beiping Library in 1926. During1930-32 he participated in a staff exchange with
Columbia University where he completed an MA in the library school, writing a thesis on the Si ku quan
shu. He went on to hold several other positions in China, before coming back to New York in 1949, where
he served as Chief of the Catalog Department at the United Nations Library prior to his appointment at Ohio
State in 1964.
Wen-yu Yen devised a systematic acquisition plan for the Chinese collection. That he was in large part
able to acquire the major collectanea and other important works necessary for Sinological studies within the
short time he was at Ohio State, operating under a budget that was never large enough to meet his aspirations
for the collection, is a testimony to his skills. Summing up his own sense that an era was ending, Yen
submitted his last annual report on July 8, 1971, writing: “In the 1960’s acquisitions were predominately
concerned with traditional China and Japan and a fundamental collection was built up which it would
become more difficult to duplicate as time goes on.”
This is what Lorcan Dempsey meant in the quote that I started with -- "Then information was scarce and
attention was abundant." Yen's words bring back a sense of the era when tracking down resources required
expertise and dedication. I should note also that although the materials were already rare when they were
acquired at Ohio State, they were not considered to be "rare books" but rather to be a working library for
scholars. For many years these Qing and Tokugawa editions sat on the open shelves along with the early
European imprints acquired in the Creed collection. They were all available for circulation! This situation
has been rectified, and now all are safely ensconced in the Rare Book collection. Removing them from easy
access caused not even a whimper of protest, though, since digital surrogates that are easily found are
suitable for most purposes. How much things have changed!!
Now -- since I do not have slides related to my next remarks, I am squeezing in a picture of how
Thompson Library -- Ohio State's Main Library -- looked "then" in 1913, and two of how it looks "now" -during the renovation that is well underway, to be completed in 2009.
Appointment of David Y. Hu
Yen's successor as East Asian librarian, David Hu, faced increasing expectations for the East Asian
library collections, especially with regard to Japanese and Korean materials. In the case of Japanese
materials, fortunately Professor James Morita, an experienced bibliographer, was hired to teach Japanese
literature in 1972. He provided recommendations with regard to Japanese language and literature
acquisitions. At the time of Naomi Fukuda’s visit to Ohio State to conduct her survey of Japanese collections
in 1980, there were 10,971 volumes of Japanese books. Fukuda took special note of Morita’s contribution,
writing: “The section on language and literature, especially modern Japanese literature, is strong, and could
be maintained as a special feature of this collection.”
James Morita also initiated a required graduate course on “Japanese Bibliography and Research
Methods” that is now taught by Professor Richard Torrance, with my frequent participation in a “team
teaching” format. A similar course on “Chinese Bibliography and Research Methods” was taught for many
years by Professor Yan-shuan Lao until his retirement in 1998 and has been continued by other faculty since
then. These courses have been especially important in introducing graduate students to library resources and
preparing them to conduct research.
Appointment of Maureen H. Donovan
Naomi Fukuda also noted in her brief report about Ohio State’s Japanese collection that, “The
percentage of uncataloged items is large … within this comparatively small collection.” In order to address
the cataloging backlog, I was hired in 1978 as a half-time Japanese cataloger.
That was at the time when Honda established its factories in Ohio. The state government responded by
setting up the Institute of Japanese Studies (IJS) at Ohio State. The founding director of IJS was Professor
Bradley Richardson (Political Science). IJS provided significant financial support for the Japanese collection
both from state funds and from grants or donations, most notably a gift that Honda Corporation founder,
Sōichirō Honda, made when he received an honorary degree from Ohio State in 1979. Furthermore IJS
created a framework that promotes communication between the Japanese studies faculty and the Japanese
Studies Librarian on library and information matters. In 2001 an Institute for Chinese Studies was established
and in 2005 the Korean Studies Initiative began, providing similar frameworks for Chinese and Korean
Studies.
Appointment of Shizue Matsuda as Consultant
With increased attention to Japan at the university, my position as Japanese studies librarian became full
time in 1981. To ensure that this arrangement would be successful, Dr Shizue Matsuda, East Asian Studies
Librarian at Indiana University, was hired as a consultant. She gave me a lot of tips and supported me in this
challenging work. Shizue Matsuda’s strongest recommendation was the creation of a separate East Asian
library collection, something faculty had been requesting for twenty years. Working with the Book Stacks
Supervisor, I developed a detailed plan for the project, which was completed in spring 1982.
Rapid Growth of Japanese Collections in the 1980s and 1990s
In the 1980s and 1990s successive grant-funded, targeted acquisitions projects supported with funding
from the Japan Foundation and the Japan-United States Friendship Commission had the effect of shaping
Ohio State’s Japanese collection in ways that differentiated it from other collections nationally. Therefore,
although a relative newcomer among Japanese collections, Ohio State quickly began contributing actively to
the pool of Japanese studies research resources available through OCLC’s Worldcat database. This was in
contrast to a kind of “collective wisdom” that existed at the time which held that newly established
collections would be bogged down duplicating the holdings of existing collections rather than adding
anything new or unique to resources available nationally. By the mid-1980s a Japanese collection strategy
was already in place:

supporting local researchers and the training of graduate students through a strong reference
collection and in-depth holdings in Japanese language, linguistics and literature (fields with large,
regular graduate enrollments)

developing unique strengths based on research interests locally or in areas of excellence and
distinction at Ohio State.
Gustavus Basch Endowment
At just that time, a most fortuitous and unexpected development came "out of the blue" -- a major
endowment for the Japanese collection from Gustavus Basch. Gus Basch was an Ohio State University
alumnus, class of 1926. A successful businessman in Miami, Florida, but at the same time a quiet and
unassuming man, Basch died without any heirs, leaving most of his fortune to charities in Miami. However,
he also left $1 million from his estate to the Ohio State University, with the stipulation that income from the
endowment be used to “create and maintain a library for Japanese and Russian books and literature for
language and cultural studies.” Nobody knows why Gus Basch made the decision that his money should be
used to purchase Japanese and Russian books. However, the Gustavus and Sidney L. Basch Memorial Fund
which was thereby established in 1990 has enabled the purchase of many important Japanese library
resources. Most recently, I have been using some of these funds to subscribe to digital resources from Japan,
since their ready availability supports "language and cultural studies" in a way that certainly would have
astonished and delighted Mr. Basch.
Leon K. Walters collection and other special collections
In 1982 the Libraries purchased a collection of Japanese research materials about Okinawa that Leon
Walters, an Ohio State alumnus, had developed while working as a civilian employee of the U.S. federal
government in Okinawa during 1964 to 1972. An avid book collector, Walters scouted out rare and unusual
items about Okinawan history, dialects, literature and folklore during his eight-year stay in Okinawa. In 1997
he donated his English language collection about Okinawa as a complement.
Ohio State has important resources related to the Japanese-American internment experience as well.
Yurii Kyogoku, who was a cataloger at Ohio State, donated her father’s collection of literary and Buddhist
works, most of which were purchased in California between 1920 and 1940. The collection comprised part of
the public library at the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah during World War II. The Libraries have also
received the papers of Toyo Suyemoto, another former librarian at Ohio State as well as a published poet,
who -- by an amazing coincidence -- was librarian of the Topaz Public Library during her internment. She
has been hailed as the Japanese-American “poet laureate" -- her memoir of life in internment has just been
published.
Shashi Collection
Ohio State's collection of Japanese company histories or shashi began in 1984 with the purchase of
about 900 titles from Nagatoya, a used book store in Tokyo. The original idea to collect Japanese company
histories was suggested by Professor Richardson, who had seen them at Nagatoya during a research trip to
Japan.Beginning in the late 1980s, I began contacting Japanese companies directly to request donations of
their company histories for the collection.
A shashi database was posted on the Internet in 1995, a pioneering effort to promote awareness of
these research materials. Most recently a Japanese Company Histories wiki project has been initiated as a
collaborative project of the Shashi Interest Group. The goal of the wiki is to promote awareness of shashi,
facilitate coordination of effort, and reach out to researchers in a more interactive way.
Manga Collection
Ohio State's Cartoon Research Library is the largest and most comprehensive academic research
facility documenting printed cartoon art. From the time I began working as Japanese bibliographer, I
considered it important that the Cartoon Research Library include examples of manga. Beginning in 1997,
following a sabbatical year at Keio University on a Japan Foundation Research Fellowship -- and undaunted
by reports that manga comprise almost 40% of Japanese publishing -- I embarked on a more focused and
systematic approach to collecting manga. My strategy is to develop a “broadly representative” collection of
manga. In 2003-04 I spent much of my next sabbatical year at the International Research Center for Japanese
Studies in Kyoto studying what I often think of as the "alternative bibliographic universe" of manga.
Well, this brings the story up through the 1990s. Thinking back to Lorcan Dempsey's quote again -- by
this time, between collecting manga and shashi and developing various web-based services, I was already
very much involved in Dempsey's "now," a world of information abundance and attention scarcity. Since
then -- there seems to be no limit on how far the abundance can expand -- or into how many directions my
attention can be scattered simultaneously. Thank you!