In Chinese bibliology, books that have been closely scrutinized, finely printed with no misprint or omission, or ancient editions that survived the ages, are called shanben (fine text). Nowadays, shanben is expanded to include those that have scholarship value, historical and cultural relics, or works with high artistic value. For CUHK, books printed before the end of the Qianlong period (1795) are classified as shanben, those printed between Jiaqing and Xuantong periods (1796–1911) are ancient books. In foreign countries, book collectors tend to value a book’s preciousness in terms of scarcity. In CUHK libraries, foreign books printed before 1900 are classified as ‘rare’.

Beginning of the Rare Book Room

CUHK libraries’ Chinese rare book collection originally comprised two parts. One part was the collection of Chung Chi College, New Asia College and United College. The other part was built up during the 1960s through the extraordinary efforts of Dr. Chiu Kai-ming, the founding librarian. At that time, all stitch-bound books were stored as closed stack items without special care. In 1999, after the publishing of Annotated Bibliography of Chinese Rare Books in the CHUK Libraries, CHUK libraries decided to establish in 2002 a permanent home to house these cultural gems at 3/F, Tin Ka Ping Building.

Books are vulnerable to changes in the environment, especially ancient books. The environmental controls of the Rare Book Room is carefully planned, particularly the temperature, relative humidity, air quality, lighting controls and security measures. ‘People are aware that we have this facility so they’re willing to donate books to us,’ Mr. Lam said. ‘Here, the charm is that all rare books acquired will never be scattered or lost again. If anyone wishes to donate their book collection, we’d gladly accept and put them here for good.’

In the past decade or so, new entries have been acquired solely through donations. For example, in 2008, Bei Shan Tang donated the private collections of the late Dr. Lee Jung-sen.

Currently, the Chinese rare book collection consists of about 890 classical titles in more than 15,000 volumes in traditional stitch-bound fascicles, and the western rare book collection has 1,800 titles.