UNC Extends Taiwanese Book Cache

TECO is donating about $35,000 worth of books -- most written in Chinese -- pertaining to various topics related to Taiwan, including politics, history, democratic reform and culture.

Originally, the gift was only going to be one 27-volume set about late Taiwanese President Ching-kuo Chiang, but it increased when UNC showed great interest, said Alice Wang, director of TECO's information division.

"(UNC) is the school that gave us the earliest and most aggressive response," Wang said. "After the exchange of several phone calls, I decided to expand the donation to over 1,500 books."

Hsi-Chu Bolick, Davis Library's East Asian cataloger, who spearheaded efforts to acquire the books, said the value of the donation is about the same as a full year's budget for Taiwan-related books.

The wide range of topics should open the door for lots of research on Taiwan, she said.

"Almost every area in the social sciences will be covered by this donation," she said.

"This will be used by people interested in Taiwan studies in literature, anthropology, political science and other areas."

Most of the donated books are written in Chinese, but a few were written in English by foreign scholars.

The addition will be instrumental in helping to institute a Chinese language and literature concentration in the Asian studies major within the next few years, said Wendan Li, an Asian studies professor who focuses on Chinese languages and linguistics.

"The donation of books covers a lot of fields," Li said. "I think this will help students and faculty a lot in their research."

Larry Alford, deputy University librarian, said donations are important for keeping up the wide range of books at a research university such as UNC, although thematic donations such as TECO's are not as common.

Most of the volumes in the North Carolina Collection and rare books and manuscript collections were donated, he said.

"The donation of collections is one of the main ways that the library has been built into a great library," Alford said.

Donations might be even more important now with the possibility of budget cuts, Alford said. Collections such as this will not replace the books that cannot be purchased this year, but they still help keep the library system strong, he said.

TECO partly decided to donate to UNC because of its membership in the Research Triangle Network, Wang said. Housing the books at UNC's library will enable people from all over North Carolina to use them.

Wang said TECO officials wanted to ensure that the resources will be available to as many people as possible.

"When they said they wanted to build an important place for Taiwan studies in this area, I was very happy to accommodate them."

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.