To increase the scope of information available over the Internet and enhance preservation of the country's cultural assets, the NCL is participating in the National Digital Archives Plan by digitizing rare and valuable books. This work is helping industry, government, academia, and the research community, increasing public convenience, and boosting national competitiveness.

The NCL collection contains a wealth of rare books, including over 12,300 works and close to 126,000 volumes. There are 155 handwritten works from Dunhuang, 175 Song-edition books, six Chin-edition books, 272 Yuan-edition books, over 6,000 Ming-edition books, close to 3,000 codices, and approximately 500 manuscripts and pijiao documents.

The collection includes exquisite works from past book collectors, several different editions of the same work, many duplicates, and a vast array of Ming Dynasty literary collections and historical materials, including many rare items not listed in the Complete Collection in Four Treasuries. The NCL Rare Books Collection Digitization Subproject digitized approximately 6,000 important rare books in the NCL collection between 2001 and 2004. The NCL will continue to digitize rare books through 2006. Approximately 6,200 ink rubbings will be digitized as well.

http://readopac.ncl.edu.tw/ndap/rar/ndap-rar-int-00.htm

The National Digital Archives Plan was approved at the 9th Electronics Information and Telecommunication Strategy (SRB) Conference of the Executive Yuan in July 1999 with the aim of building Internet content and preserving the cultural assets of Taiwan. This plan has been carried out by the National Science Council, with the National Central Library (NCL) and six other institutions selected as the first participating organizations.

The NCL plays an important function in preserving rare books and promoting the intellectual heritage of the people of Taiwan. As a national academic library, NCL has endeavored to maintain and build its rare book collection. One of the most pressing tasks facing the library today is to find ways to use digital technology to preserve these precious cultural archives.

Local documents serve the important roles of preserving local culture and historical data, while improving local understanding, providing a native learning resource, and building local awareness. These functions can be even better served by making these resources available to the public in digital form over the Internet.

Periodicals and newspapers are the most rapid media for conveying information and the results of research developments. They are also the most important media of recording recent developments in the humanities, social sciences and technology fields, making them the most frequently sought materials by readers across a broad spectrum of topics and languages. In the production of electronic publications, therefore, top priority should be given to periodicals and newspapers. In America, many electronic library plans aimed at digitizing periodicals, such as TULIP, CORE Project, and CIC Journal, have been setting the pace in the digitalization of full-text periodical content and in promoting online access to such content.

http://readopac.ncl.edu.tw/ndap/

Local documents provide a valuable record of regional information and local culture and development. Local documents can be classified according to information types and information content.

The first group includes books, relics and audio and electronic materials; the second historic articles, monuments, folk customs, cultural landscape, industries, literature, art, historical materials, and other areas. These documents enhance local awareness and serve as teaching materials on local topics.

Through digitization, these materials can be preserved and made widely available over the Internet. In additional to digitizing the NCL's local document collection (including local annals, local literature, and local government publications¡Xannouncements, statistics, and pamphlets), this subproject will be expanded to include the scanning of local documents in county and city cultural bureaus, literary societies, and local libraries. The result of this work will be a major database of great importance to research on local people, events, periods, places, and things.

http://readopac.ncl.edu.tw/ndap/loc/ndap-loc-int-00.htm

Periodicals and newspapers are the most rapid media for conveying information and the results of research developments. They are also the most important media of recording recent developments in the humanities, social sciences and technology fields, making them the most frequently sought materials by readers. This plan aims at digitizing about 1,000 periodicals and 30 newspapers published in Taiwan within five years to facilitate public access and preserve these materials.

http://readopac.ncl.edu.tw/ndap/per/ndap-per-int-00.htm

Subproject 4 of the NCL National Digital Archives Plan aims principally to establish hardware and software for the NCL Digital Collection Information System, store digital resources, and provide Internet access to these resources. The subproject aims to on preserve and manage effectively the results of digital resources for public access. The computer servers established under this subproject will be used to store digital resources and make them available online. Open hardware, management, and application systems will be adopted and regularly updated.

http://readopac.ncl.edu.tw/ndap/sys/ndap-sys-int-00.htm

This website introduces this library's collection of rare and antique books with multimedia programs such as writings, images, videos and music. This website consists of the following six divisions: origins, features, connoisseurship, lexicon, films (of selected collection and introduction, rare book store, antique book restoration and arrangement) and index of lexicons and precious books.

http://wwworg.ncl.edu.tw/rarebook/index.htm

The Ming Literature Database contains 17 precious anthologies of Ming writers and poets in the National Central Library; all of them are displayed in colourful electronic images.

While users can find part of the database contents on the internet, on the Library's intranet they can view all of the electronic contents and search the database by book title, author, edition, chapter, preface and postscript author, etc.

The rare and antique book collection of the National Central Library has the reputation of being one of the important resources for academic research among sinologists around the world because of its holding of more than 12,000 series of rare and antique books including publications, hand-written copies and rare drafts of the Sung, Yuan, Ming, and Chin dynasties across the fields of classics, history, philosophy and belles-lettres.

While the collection of rare and antique books were transferred on microfilm at the readers’ convenience, in this information age all the contents of the book collection will be digitalised by photography, scanning and other computer technologies. Given that all the collection of books is now available on microfilm, we will digitalise only selected books in a series of special issues at the early stage of this project. This strategy is chosen because of its flexibility.

http://wwworg.ncl.edu.tw/flyweb/ncl-book/index.htm

The National Central Library holds rich collection of antique books which are more than 12,300 series of rare books, that is, near 126,000 volumes. Its rare book collection includes 153 scrolls of Tunhuang manuscripts, 175 series of Sung dynasty manuscripts, 6 series of Jin dynasty manuscripts, 272 series of Yuan dynasty manuscripts, more than 6,000 series of Ming dynasty manuscripts, near 3,000 hand-copied manuscripts, about 500 series of drafts and 500 series of commentaries.

This collection of rare books is unique for the following reasons. It contains many selected collections of famous bibliophiles in history. It contains different editions of some famous works. It often has several copies of the same editions. It has rich collection of Ming literature and historical materials. Finally, it includes many writings that are not recorded in Qianqingtan Bibliography and the General Bibliography of the Complete Book Collection of the Four Repositories.

http://rarebook.ncl.edu.tw/rbookod/

This database which records the bibliography of antique books in the format of metadata arranges and displays them by selected core bibliographic fields. This bibliographic database includes more than 110,000 items of Taiwan's major archives of antique books and more than 300,000 items of common antique books in China's National Library, in addition to more than 600 tested items by other 11 institutes in China, Hong Kong and Macau.

This library aims to encourage the sharing of cost and outcome of database building by enlarging the bibliographic base of rare books. It therefore built up Taiwan's Union Catalogue of Rare and Antique Books in 1998 based on the rare and antique books and string-bound collections in Taiwan's public archives.

Libraries in China, Hong Kong and Macau also provide certain amount of test data. This library also purchased the bibliographic data of antique books from China's national library and incorporated it into the Chinese Antique Book Bibliography Database which records now more than 610,000 bibliographic entries of antique books in total.

http://ccs.ncl.edu.tw/rbookhtml/rbookhtml/nclrbook.htm

There are currently about 6,000 lineage records in Taiwan. This database which records the bibliography of antique books in the format of metadata arranges and displays them by selected core bibliographic fields. In addition to the more than 14,000 bibliographic items of genealogy in 11 public and private institutes such as National Palace Museum and Academia Sinica, this database is search of Taiwanese lineage records in other institutes.

http://ccs.ncl.edu.tw/ncfamily/

The number of bronze and stone rubbings in this Library is 12,462 or 6,462 excluding copies. The largest part of our collection is the 2,820 rubbings of tomb inscription, and then the 2,826 rubbings of carved stone and the 771 rubbings of fortunate bronze (bronze script overall rubbings). The sources of bronze rubbings are mainly bell, cauldron and other ritual bronzes, in addition to sources such as measures, weapons and mirror inscriptions, all of them dating from the Shang, western Chou dynasties, the Spring and Autumn period, Warring States Period to the Han dynasty. The craftsman of the great majority of these bronze rubbings are Si-ding Chou （Kang-huan） in the Jin-si era, though some of them are marked by Geng Rong and Chong-si Wu.

The main resource of stone rubbings, on the other hand, is stele inscriptions. The scripts of stone inscription during the two Han dynasties include both Jhuang and Li while their contents includes stele records, caved inscriptions, preambles, broken slabs. Thus we can see from these rubbings not only the great achievement of stele building during the two Hans but also the development of the scripts of Jhuang and Li. Furthermore, some of the more than 1,000 rubbings of Tang stele inscriptions in our collection would provide us what are missing in the Complete Work of Tang Prose. With the hope of providing much better access to our precious bronze and stone rubbings for academic research, this Library has started the digitalisation of this culture treasure in 2005 and put it on line for public use.

http://rarebook.ncl.edu.tw/gold/

This Selected Collection Exhibition on line is arranged into the three sections of selected collection, electronic books and publication. The first section is an introduction of the Library's selected collection which is mainly special exhibitions and general exhibitions of the Rare Book Department in the past. The second section provides the service of download, preview and purchase of electronic books that are designed and published by the Library's Special Collection Division. The publication section lists the past publications of our Special Collection Division whose digital versions are now available to the public on line. Furthermore, Introduction to Chinese Antique Books displays the Library's collection of rare and antique books with multimedia materials such as writings, pictures, videos and music.

http://rarebook.ncl.edu.tw/rbookod/exhibition/

The National Newspaper Information System was established by the National Central Library in 2002 to integrate the national resources of newspaper. The main purpose of this system is to provide users of the Library and the internet with the retrieval service of integrated news information including news of the Library's various printed newspapers and magazines, on-line instant news, newspaper digital images, news topics, e-newspapers and other internet resources.

http://readopac.ncl.edu.tw/cgi/ncl9/m_ncl9_news

The National Central Library is Taiwan's only national library. To improve the professionalism of Taiwan's periodical archives, the Library has been promoting their digital storage by using relevant information technology in recent years. The current content of this database that is open for public use is periodical contents scanned by the Library. As to those periodicals that are missing from the database, they are still in the process of scanning by the Library.

http://readopac.ncl.edu.tw/periodical/hypage.cgi

This system provides publishing information of the following databases: Chinese Periodical Index Image System, ROC Periodical Directory System, Government Gazette Inquiry System, Government Statistics Inquiry System, ROC Government Publication Catalogue Inquiry System, Inquiry System of Official Reports on Overseas Assignments and Contemporary Literature History as well as other similar databases and services.

http://www.read.com.tw/web/hypage.cgi?HYPAGE=index.htm