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94
HONG KONG UNIVERSITY ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Confidential
No. HKUAC 21.
Bite note y Mr. Sloss on the Libraries of the University..
1.
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Chinese Library. The Pung Ping shan Library is counted a good one. Le have the Chinese classics, the Dynastic Histories and the Encyclopaedias in the best modern editions and have been ever since about 1912 collecting books of contemporary writers; poets, essayists and novelists. The Library is housed in a reasonably wel: planned building given by a local Chinese family and it has from a like source a small endowment for purchases. There are good reading rooms and an ample supply of periodical literature, a condition of the gift that the library is open to the Chinese public.
In fact it has become one of the -major libraries of Southern China both in its scope and in the degree in which it has begun to draw gifts of books, and manuscripts from Chinese donors. 2. General Library. This is the weakest ecation of the whole. Thers is a good selection of books covering the range of English Literature out there is need of considerable expenditure on standard editions of the Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatists and of XVI XVill century poets. Standard collections of the Essayists and early novelists (Ballantyne, for example) are needed. A chief ,defect is in journals: Sets of Anglia, Engliche Studien and Modern Language Notes are nee de d. Full sets of the publications of the Early English Texts' Society, of the Scottish Texts' Society, of the Shakespeare Societies and of the Malone Society are needed. Normal reference books, as the Dictionary of National Biography, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the New English History, the English Dialect Dictionary are available.
The Library is relatively well supplied with modern work or. Chinese, Japanese and Far Sastern History and affairs, but is deficient in anything but the obvious works on modern European and American History, In modern works on the history of India and the Arab world the Library is very deficient. The same is true for Colonial and Imperial History. Reprints of documents we are almost entirely without.
In duonomics there is a satisfactory supply bpth of modern studies and of journals. This is the least unsatisfactory pranch of the General Library, though a good deal is needed in Politics. (Especial • modern American and european studies).
There is an indiffereum library in standard Frencn literature, and in Portu¿cese wherein there should be an attempt at much greater completeness in view of the local importance of the language and of Portuguese studies generally. In other modern languages the Library is weak Modern Geography is only now finding, its way into the Par Nast. Chut bunks and mapa we have are relatively modern but nere again expansion is of great importance, cepecially in the literature of regional surveys.
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In Jeychology and in the literature of Education the Library is not very extensive but it is good so far as it goes. The supply of books on destern Philosophy Indian and Buddhist, is better than on Western, put ngain there is a lack of journals:
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Science Libraries. Libraries in Physics, Chemistry, Botany and Zoology have all the standard journals in Snglish, French and German,
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