Library Guides: Chinese Studies and Language: Primary sources

The Rare East Asian Collection and microforms

The Rare East Asian Collection houses more than 20,000 volumes of titles ranging from the 17th century to the 21st century.

Collection items can be requested for viewing in the Special Collections Reading Room at the Baillieu Library, Level 3.

The University of Melbourne Library holds a significant Chinese Microform Collectioncontaining a wealth of primary and secondary source material. For example, 红卫兵资料 OR 申報; 大公報 For more information about accessing the microforms collection, click on the button below (this will open in a new window):

Visit the Microforms guide

Chinese primary source databases

Below are recommended China-related primary source databases. Find more by browsing all primary source databases, limit results by searching China.

Quan guo bao kan suo yin shu ju ku 1857-1992
Developed by Shanghai library, this database covers millions of records of digitized newspapers and periodicals from Late Qing period to contemporary China. The library has access to selected series from 民国时期期刊索引数据库 and 现刊索引数据库.
Hytung Chinese Old Periodicals Database (1792-1949)
Contains thousands of magazines and newspapers printed in China from 1792 to 1949, plus important materials for modern literary studies such as "Dian Shi Zhai Pictorial", "Education World", and more.

Foreign Office Files for China, 1919-1980
The six parts of this collection make available all British Foreign Office files dealing with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan between 1919 and 1980. Due to the long-unique nature of the relationship between Britain and China, these formerly restricted British government documents, consisting of diplomatic dispatches, letters, newspaper cuttings, maps, reports of court cases, biographies of leading personalities, summaries of events and diverse other materials, provide unprecedented levels of detail into one of the most turbulent centuries of Chinese history.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers
These historical newspapers provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time. The individual titles can be cross-searched alongside all ProQuest Newspaper collections.