Page 205 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

204 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol. 7, 2015

Federation of Library Associations and Institutions have great research value for documenting
events during the Anti-Japanese War (Pan, 2012). Among all these materials, perhaps the most
influential document was Library situation in China, which was written by Yuan Tongli (1944)
to Carl H. Milam of American Library Association. This report was an overall review of Chinese
libraries destroyed by Japan. Once published in America it quickly provoked huge repercussion
among foreign people.
Government agencies produced considerable quantity of records while performing routine
duties, which is the primary information resource for our research subjects. Those interrelated
records usually focus on one incident and document all the decisions and actions related to that
event. As a consequence, government records often provide much more complete and authentic
information than other kinds of historical materials. Nanjing Archives, Jiangsu Provincial Archives
and the Second Historical Archives of China hold a certain amount of such records. Here is a
partial list of government records which are of high credibility and often cited by scholars (see
Table 2). We divide them into two categories: 1) official documents, such as telegrams, between
the central government and local governments during the war, 2) documents and statistics from
investigations of losses after Anti-Japanese War.

Table 2. A list of selective archives about Japan’s plundering of Chinese books
Title Repository File Number
Educational and cultural organization’s reports on losses after bombed by 5(1)/5283
Japanese
National Central University’s correspondences on its losses 649/5868
Lost items of Institute of Liberal Arts, Peking University when occupied by 5/1632
Japan
The property damage of Institute of Geology during the war The Second 374/111
Historical Archives of
Purple Mountain Observatory was taken over by Japanese China 2033/58
A list of duplicated books “received” by Mitsubishi Economic Research 2033/203
Institute
The developments of educational and cultural organizations to ask Japan for 5(1)/15550
compensations and the arrangement of the puppet government records
The current situation of Nanjing Public Library Nanjing Archives 1009-1-1489

A list of damaged rare books of Jiangsu Provincial Sinology Library 1006-serie B-926
Jiangsu Provincial Sinology Library appeals to Ministry of Education Jiangsu Provincial
to make a thorough investigation on the lost books and claim for Archives 1006-serie B-926
compensation
Jinling Women’s College’s report on its losses of antiquities and ancient a6908
books Academia Historica
Commercial Press’s application to take back its objects robbed by Japanese in Taipei a74151
Note: We discovered 137 items of relevant records in total. Here are some of the ones that have been highly cited.

However, there may be inconsistencies between information from different historical