The Library is pleased to launch the new Digital Collections Portal with the purposes to preserve scholarly and intellectual work from the Library’s special collections, and to make the full-text openly accessible by faculty members, students and general public to support research and learning. The Portal contains digital contents of rare books, lyric manuscripts, oral history interviews and digital humanity projects. Here are the collection highlights:

1. Rare Books on China and East Asia
   

   The Library has been digitizing the rare books of its Special Collections. To give users a glimpse of the Chinese and East Asian cultures and histories in western eyes between 18th and early 20th century, this collection contains the rare books on China and East Asia which were mainly published in western countries between 1704 and 1922. Users can also browse different topics by its sub-collections including Chinese Literature, Missionary, Religions in China, Social Life and Customs in China, Statistics of China Commerce, Travel in China, etc.

2. Cheng Kok-kong’s Lyric Manuscripts & Oral History Interviews

   Cheng Kok-kong, Cantopop lyricist, was Artist-in-Residence 2017/18 of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Mr Cheng has been writing more than 2,000 Cantopop songs. Many of his songs still enjoy immense popularity to this day. These digital contents contain around 100 lyric manuscripts and his oral history interview records, which help users to know more stories behind the lyric manuscripts.

   
   “When I was Little” Lyric: Cheng Kok-kong / Composer: James Koo (1977)
   〈小時候〉詞:鄭國江 / 曲:顧嘉輝 (1977)

For enquiries, please contact us at lbviews@polyu.edu.hk.