A new exhibit features the diverse collections of UC Berkeley's East Asian Library. Located in the Bernice Layne Brown Gallery, Doe Library, the exhibit runs through February 21, 2008.
Berkeley's East Asian collection began in 1896 with John Fryer's deposit of his personal library of 2,000 volumes. Over the years it has grown to become one of the largest and richest collections of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean materials in the United States. Among the items on display are Chinese woodblocks and manuscripts once in the collections of some of the most eminent bibliophiles of Qing and Republican China and early modern Japan, Japanese woodblock maps and miniature editions, Meiji era frontispieces hand printed from woodblocks, early movable-type printing from Korea, handwritten sutras dating to the seventh century, and Tibetan and Mongolian manuscripts.
This exhibit is one of many events marking the dedication in October 2007 of a new building for the C. V. Starr East Asian Library and Chang-Lin Tien Center for East Asian Studies.