Dear EAJRS members,
At the end of August, two new digital image and data presentations went online on CrossAsia (crossasia.org). They expand the portfolio of electronic resources on Taiwan within the CrossAsia database portal to include materials that would otherwise have remained invisible, made available under the CC-BY-NC-SA license:
Photography Database of the National Taipei University of Education and The Tomoe Takagi Collection.
With these new releases, a total of 10 projects have now been published on CrossAsia; these originated from scholarly projects led by researchers and research groups and—through collaboration with CrossAsia | FID Asia —have now been made permanently publicly accessible, discoverable, and searchable.
The infrastructure created by CrossAsia not only makes scholarly annotated datasets available for research but also ensures the long-term preservation and visibility of these sources. As with other presentations based on IIIF manifests, we will also publish the manifests here as a research dataset in the CrossAsia Open Access Repository.
Photography Database of the National Taipei University of Education
A publicly accessible database of historical photographs from the National Taipei University of Education (NTUE) has been created through a collaboration between Prof. Ho I-lin 何義麟 (NTUE), Prof. Dr. Christine Moll-Murata (Ruhr University Bochum/RUB), Prof. Chien Hung-yi 簡宏逸 (National Cheng Kung University), and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Stabi). The NTUE is Taiwan's oldest modern educational institution, established during the Japanese colonial period.
As a significant teacher training institution, it has produced numerous photographs of school and student life over the decades. The digital photo collection comprises more than 3,000 photographs spanning the period from 1895 to 1991. It documents, among other things, teacher training, student and academic life, the organization of the institution, and its relationships with institutions in Taiwan and abroad.
The accompanying thematic portal provides an overview of the research project, the history of the NTUE, and the scientific context.
The Tomoe Takagi Collection
The second new resource offers a unique insight into the life and work of the Japanese physician Tomoe Takagi (1858–1943). Takagi was active in Japan, Europe, and Taiwan, and the historical collection comprises photographs, postcards, and personal correspondence. It also includes photographs documenting significant diplomatic events of the era.
The database was created through a collaboration between Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) and the State Library (Stabi). The cataloging of the collection is the result of research conducted by Dr. Yu-Yin Hsu (RUB) as part of the BMFTR-funded research project "Taiwan as a Pioneer" (TAP), in cooperation with colleagues from Changhua Senior High School in Taiwan, where the original documents are housed.
Please enjoy to explore the new resources!
With best wishes
On behalf of the CrossAsia Team
Ursula Flache