Sichuan University Library Exchange

In September 2019 I traveled to Chengdu, China representing Arizona State University (ASU) Library in the Sichuan University Libraries Exchange program. The ASU Library has sent six librarians to Chengdu since 2011.

During my month at Sichuan University, I learned about the storage and conservation practices for the Sichuan University’s Special Collections materials. For preservation many of the medieval materials are stored in custom built cedar chests that impede insects from eating the ancient paper. The collections include correspondence, poetry and government documents.

In the conservation lab, I learned that the restoration of a book can take up to a year depending on its condition. Early manuscripts were written on fragile rice paper that was later pasted onto sturdier rice paper that was then bound into books. 

Sichuan University Library also holds a few pictographic books of early writings by the Naxi people in Yunnan and Sichuan. These books of rough handmade sheets are sewn together on the left edge. Although a form of the pictographic writing is still in use among the modern Naxi people, the practice of crafting the books in this manner has ceased. The Chinese anthropologist Zhu Bao-Tian said, "The Naxi manuscripts are a living fossil for the study of ancient culture."[i]

To my delight, I was able to see the full copy of the translation of the Buddhist scroll known as the Heart Sutra, one of the books of the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya, which was copied during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The Heart Sutra is better known as a guide to contemplation.[ii]

A few weeks into my stay, I was invited by Dr. Marisol Shi Wei from the Spanish Department to give a presentation and meet the students that are studying in the Latin American Studies Center at Sichuan University on the Jiangan campus. My talk, “Latin American Literature in International Archives,” focused on the manuscripts from Latin America that are accessible online. The students at the center do not have access to an extensive library of Latin American print resources and therefore digitized online resources help the students to access primary sources no matter where they are in the world.[iii] 

[iii] Seonaid Valiant, “How to find Online Resources regarding Codices and Colonial Latin American Documents,” 2018. https://libguides.asu.edu/ColonialLatinAmerica-Codices-Docs