Formed collection

Sang Ye collection

The writer and bibliophile Sang Ye was born in Beijing in 1955 and grew up during the tumultuous years of China's Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). He later became a journalist and together with the novelist Zhang Xinxin produced Chinese Lives : An Oral History of Contemporary China based on interviews with some 100 Chinese men and women. Sang Ye has lived in Australia since 1989. An article on Sang Ye appeared in the National Library's journal Voices, Spring 1991.

The collection acquired from Sang Ye by the National Library constitutes a significant addition to the Library's coverage of contemporary China. It included monographs, pamphlets, newspapers and other materials produced in the People's Republic of China between 1949 and the 1980s. In particular Sang Ye had acquired extensive runs of 44 newspaper titles from the 1950s and 1960s, the Cultural Revolution and post Cultural Revolution era.

The newspaper component of the Sang Ye Collection complements the Library's existing holdings in this area. These consist of around 400 Chinese language newspapers published in China and 14 other countries including Australia and the Southeast Asian nations.

The Library's Chinese language holdings constitute its largest Asian language collection, with over 200,000 volumes of monographs, 5,000 journal and newspaper titles, as well as many microforms, films and maps. The Library's Collection Development Policy assigns a high priority to publications from and about China, in order to meet the rising demand for information and research material in Australia.

The Sang Ye Collection and the Library's other Chinese language holdings are available for use in the Asian Collections Reading Room on the Third Floor. The reading room is open each Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 4.45 p.m.

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