Since its establishment in 1928, the Institute of History and Philology has actively engaged itself in the collection of related historical materials, such as artifacts, books and documents. The Fu Ssu-Nien Library, the Museum of the IHP and the Taiwan Archeological Studies Building each houses part of the Institute’s collection. Starting from 2001, through participating in National Digital Archives Plan of Academia Sinica, digitalization has begun for archeological findings, stone rubbings, rare books, cultural artifacts of ethnic minorities, archives of the Grand Secretariat, as well as other collections. In 2014, the IHP Archives was established in order to effectively coordinate and maintain the archival documents and related digital files collected by each individual department of the IHP, with the expectation that besides instituting systematic management and preservation, the new archive would also collect and compile additional documents on an ongoing basis.
As it is still in its incipient phase, the IHP Archives continues to mainly focus on the file compilation of the IHP’sacademic and administrative written documents as well as publicly soliciting worthy collections. Therefore, unfortunately, the IHP Archives has not yet opened to the public for information retrieval, document browsing, or document copying. In the near future, when the Archives is fully organized and ready, the IHP will establish regulations for the services mentioned above under the monitoring of the Archive Management Committee. Such services will then be open to the public, thus implementing the policy of giving citizens the rights to be shared with and to use the government’s information.
Current Collection | ||||||
(I.) | IHP files and documents | |||||
1. | Personal items of Fu Ssu-Nien, including documents from the IHP, documents from his participation in the National Political Council and Legislative Yuan, his manuscripts, personal letters, and other memorial items | |||||
2. | IHP-related: | |||||
(1) | Administrative files: A majority of the existing collection is administrative files of the IHP from the pre-war period to the 70’s, including the budget account books, reports on salary, medication, records of receiving materials, construction projects, distribution of dormitories and transaction of equipment. | |||||
(2) | Academic materials: | |||||
A. | IHP academic working reports from different periods. | |||||
B. | Contacts with other academic institutions: | |||||
(A) | Preparatory Office, National Central Museum: | |||||
When the IHP was in Li Zhuang, the IHP had a strong tie with the National Central Museum, and hence kept many of its meeting minutes in IHP’s Academic Materials.. | ||||||
(B) | Committee for the Preservation of Cultural Relics and Special Committee for Exhibition, Executive Yuan, Wang Ching-wei Regime: | |||||
During the Sino-Japanese war, the IHP’s materialsin Nanking was taken in by the Committee for the Preservation of Cultural Relics. The IHP now houses documents of cultural exchanges between the Wang regime and the Japanese authority in this period, such as meeting minutes and records of exhibitions. | ||||||
(C) | Peking Books and Historical Materials Processing Office: | |||||
Founded by the IHP after the Sino-Japanese War to be responsible for the artifacts and booksin Peking. | ||||||
(D) | Correspondences with otheracademic foundations: | |||||
Records of how subsidies were used by the IHP as well as the progress of each research proposal. | ||||||
C. | Books and publications | |||||
The IHP already had been publishing academic journals and monographic books before the breakout of the Sino-Japanese War. Invoices, sales records, as well as correspondence with domestic and foreign bookstores and libraries are preserved in the Archives. The Archives also holds documents related to book-ordering from each time period. | ||||||
D. | Diaries: Diaries of He Ziquan, Yan Gengwang, Ma Xueliang, as well as two working diaries from IHP administrative staff members. | |||||
E. | Manuscripts and notecards | |||||
(a) | Fu Lehuan and Yan Gengwang left behind abundant amount of notecards and manuscript pieces | |||||
(b) | Firsthand records and working plans from early field studies on dialects and from the Institute of Linguistics (primarily around 1940). | |||||
F. | Records (Discs): | |||||
This contains many of the recordings made when IHP was still doing linguistic researches in mainland China, including the recordings of the field works on Southwestern Chinese dialects, as well as discs of published songs and plays trending at the time. | ||||||
G. | Collections of books, letters and documents from former IHP fellows: Mr. Chen Pan, Mr. Lao Gan, Mr. Jin Fagen, Mr. Zhang Weiren. | |||||
(II.) | Donated archives: | |||||
1. | On 2016/10/12, the IHP went to the Tainan Agricultural Research and Extension Station to take in 1,596 pre-1950 documents on agricultural research and extension. 1,478 of these documents were given to the IHP Archives; 114 documents were loaned to the Archives to be repaired and duplicated, after which the original files were sent back to the Agricultural Research and Extension Station, while the duplicates of these documents were kept in the IHP Archives. After rearranging and categorizing, there are 2,294 files in total. | |||||
2. | On 2017/3/14, the Fu Ssu-nien Library transferred letters, manuscripts and other documents from Mr. Ping-Ti Ho to the IHP Archives. They are now undergoing a cleaning process piece by piece. | |||||
3. | On 2017/03/31, on behalf of the relatives of Dr. Hsien Rin (deceased), the NTUH donated 25 boxes of research manuscripts on iatrology. | |||||
4. | On 2018/01/10, on behalf of her relatives, Dr. Jin-Fen Chuang donated 200 boxes of research manuscripts, letters and other documents from the deceased Dr. Shu Chi Chuang |