Special Libraries

The university libraries of Belgrade and Sofia (1888), 192,039 vols., and the national library at Sofia (1924), over 200,000 printed books and 5,50o mss., are the chief in the Balkans. There is a Bulgarian State Library Commission, which organizes local libraries and trains librarians.

At Athens the national library (1842) possesses about 400,000 vols., 3,80o mss., and 200,000 historical documents.

Constantinople has a National library (1925) and a public library, the Oumoumiye, of about 300,00o volumes. There are over 120,000 vols. in the University library (I 9r 0), and there are also libraries at the Greek literary society and the Theological school. The mosque of St. Sophia contains a library of some thousands of mss., of which a printed catalogue is obtainable, con sisting mostly of Korans and service books. The old Seraglio contains many important books.

China.

The earliest notice of a library in China is that of the imperial Chou dynasty whose capital was at Loyang in the modern province of Honan. According to a tradition preserved in Ssu-ma Ch'ien's "Historical Record" the philosopher Lao-tse, who lived in the seventh century before Christ, was keeper of books in this library. National collections of books in the modern sense, how ever, originated with the attempts made to recover the books scattered or destroyed by the so-called "First Emperor" in 220 B.C. Hence the earliest catalogue of Chinese books is preserved in the "History of the Former Han Dynasty" (206 B.c.-23 A.D.) and written in the first century of our era. The histories of nearly all succeeding dynasties have likewise left catalogues of books preserved in their libraries or known to their times. After the invention of printing in China private libraries became increasingly numerous. From time to time these were destroyed or dispersed, but catalogues of many of them remain. There are still some fourteen large private libraries in various parts of China some of which contain as many as two hundred thousand volumes.

According to a survey made by the Library Association of China in 1927 there were then 503 public and private libraries in China proper and Manchuria. Of this total the province of Kiangsu has 145; the city of Shanghai 6o, Peking 42, and Nanking 20. The largest single collection of books is found in the Metro politan Library, Peking. Each provincial capital also has its own library. The following universities boast large and rapidly grow ing collections of both Chinese and western books : Peking Na tional University, Sun Yat Sen University (Canton), Tsinghua University (Peking), Yenching University (Peking), Amoy Uni versity, and Nanking University. The most common classification of books in Chinese libraries—the so-called Ssu K'u system which has been in vogue for fifteen centuries—divides all Chinese litera ture into four classes : classics, history, philosophy, and belles lettres. A few of the modern Chinese libraries have discarded this system entirely, but most of them combine with it a modified Dewey or Library of Congress classification. (See the files of the Library Science Quarterly, T'u Shu Kuan Hsiieh Chi K'an, the official organ of the Library Association of China which was founded in 1925.) Japan.—The ancient history of libraries in Japan is analogous to that of China.

Perhaps the most extensive library of the empire is that of the Imperial Cabinet (1885) at Tokyo with 507,600 vols., con sisting of the collections of various Government departments.

The Imperial library at Uyeno Park (1872) contains 387,208 vols., of which some 297,000 are in Japanese or Chinese. At Tokyo there is also the Ohashi library (1902), 81,154 vols., the Hibiya library (1908), 153,000 vols., and the Nanki library (1899), 87,00o vols. The library of the Imperial University of Kyoto (1899) contains nearly 65o,000 vols., of which a large proportion are in European languages. Kyoto and other towns have con siderable municipal libraries. Kasan in Korea has a library of about 250,000 vols.