Korean Studies Library Resources

Korean Studies Library Resources IN KOREAN

The Korean Collection of the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University was established in 1931 by a donation of nearly 1,000 books by Korean students at CU. Systematic collection of Korean materials, however, began only after renewed interest in Korean Studies in the early 1950s.  As of June 30 2006, the Korean collection consists of more than 69,000 monographs, 700 periodicals, and over 1,000 non-book formats such as microfilm, audio-visual and so on.  Electronic resources such as CD-ROMs, full text databases, and e-books have been purchased since the late 1990s.  Materials published in North Korea are also continuously collected. 

The special collection holds approximately 660 titles in 2,230 volumes of rare books including the Yi Song-ui Collection, Sonbon and over 150 titles of  Korean novels, called “Sin sosol” (published between 1915 and 1947) that are stored in the East Asian Rare Book Room.  The Yi Song-ui Collection, which consists of 517 titles in 1,857 volumes was acquired in the late 1960s and a significant number of these are books printed with movable metal type - some of which predate the 1590s. The volumes are housed in over 700 cases and are printed, either with woodblocks or movable wood or metal type fonts, on Korean paper made from mulberry tree fiber. 

The Korean collection covers a variety of subjects in the humanities, social sciences and arts with substantial holdings in history, philosophy, religion, arts, classics, and literature.  In addition to this, as a member of the Korean Consortium, the collection emphasizes subjects such as Seoul, popular culture, fine and performing arts, education, psychology and Korean history between 1864 and1945. 

The Korean Collection primarily supports the teaching and research of the faculty and students in the Korean Studies programs at CU via the online catalog CLIO, but resources are also available to researchers nationally and internationally through Borrowdirect, and Interlibrary Loan Services.  For more information on searching the Korean materials, please see the section, Library Use.

If there are any questions, comments and requests for the addition of materials regarding the Korean collection, please contact the Korean Studies Librarian, Hee-sook Shin via email or phone (212-854-1507)