CUHK Library E-newsletter

Exhibition - Chinese and Western Rare Books

"Bringing Together China and the West: Books of Early Modern Western Sinology in The Chinese University of Hong Kong Library" Exhibition

2023 is the 60th anniversary of CUHK. Among the celebrations is an exhibition of the CUHK Library’s burgeoning collection of Western rare books on China. Through this exhibition of the finest works of early Sinology, we see how the geographical and cultural distance between China and Europe was bridged. The exhibition also reveals the formation of many of the most dynamic areas of our modern university, from the study of China’s philosophy and earliest dynastic history, to biomedical science and mechanical engineering.

Exhibition Details:

Date: 6 February– 20 August 2023

Venue: Exhibition Area, University Library, CUHK

Organisers: CUHK Library, Department of History and Institute of Chinese Studies of CUHK

New Publication

Bringing Together China and the West:
Books of Early Modern Western Sinology in the CUHK Library

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of CUHK in 2023, the University Library organized an exhibition and complied this commemorative volume to record and contextualize its burgeoning collection of Western rare books about China. This splendid volume features books, maps, and manuscripts from the 15th to the early mid 19th centuries. Through its extended introduction, images, and descriptions, this book illustrates the dynamic early history of the West’s longstanding and profound interest in China, thereby giving members of the university community and the public at large an opportunity to consider how we might better “combine tradition with modernity and bring together China and the West.”

Research Café and Research Poster Exhibition

The Library organizes a wide variety of activities for postgraduate students such as the Research Café and Research Poster Exhibition. Research Café aims at facilitating interdisciplinary research ideas exchange and providing opportunities for CUHKresearch postgraduate students to enhance their presentation skills. 18 Research Cafés have been organized since 2014. The latest one was in September 2022 and the focused topic was Carbon Neutrality: Climate Science. It was moderated by Prof. Yuan XU, Associate Professor from the Department of Geography and Resource Management. Prof. Lin LIU, Associate Professor from the Earth System Science Programme, gave a short talk on “Permafrost: a thawing carbon time bomb?”. After the short talk, two Ph.D. students presented their research related to this topic.

The Research Poster Exhibition (RPE) is co-organized by the CUHK Library, the Graduate School, and the Independent Learning Centre (ILC). It is organized annually for current CUHK postgraduate students to showcase their research work in the form of posters and provide participants opportunities to enhance their poster presentation skills. The upcoming Oral Presentations and Award Ceremony was held on 17 May 2023. Participants will be invited to present their research content orally in three minutes to a panel of judges. Prizes will be awarded to the best poster presentations. Selected research posters will be displayed in the University Library during the exhibition period.

CUHK Data Hack 2023

The second Data Hack was co-organised by the CUHK Library in collaboration with the Center for Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship and Innovation (EPIN) Minor Programme, Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, Data Science and Policy Studies Programme, School of Journalism and Communication, Department of Management and Department of Social Work was held from 17 to 19 February 2023. CUHK students and staff have participated individually or in groups to team up demonstrating their digital skills within 48 hours!

In early February, eight pre-hackathon workshops were organized to enhance participants’ digital skills covering topics on data scraping, processing, visualisation and deployment. The Data Hack attracted more than 80 students and staff registered with around 50 attending the Opening Ceremony on 17 February 2023. A total of 11 groups were formed and each working on a project from the chosen sub-themes. Their creative solutions were revealed during the Final Presentation on 19 February 2023. Congratulations to the winning teams and all participants who showcased their talents within 48 hours! Welcome to visit the event page for more details.

Data Analytics Practice Opportunity Event

To arouse awareness of the data resources available at CUHK and promote interest in data reuse, the Library organized the Data Analytics Practice Opportunity 2022/23. The call for applications in September 2022 attracted 24 teams to submit project proposals. Four teams with ten undergraduate and postgraduate students from disciplines such as Computer Science, System Engineering and Engineering Management, Statistics, Biochemistry, and Psychology were selected to create data analysis and visualization projects.

With their interdisciplinary background, the students made use of the data resources from the CUHK Digital Repository, CUHK Research Data Repository, and other collections in the Library and the Art Museum to conduct natural language processing and visualisation of Hong Kong journals and newspapers: Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine and The Observatory Review, develop a deep learning algorithm on painting collections, and study de Bruijn graph assembler study of the millipede genomes.

The students exchanged ideas with our Library team monthly, and they were also advised by faculty members and their teams from the Art Museum and the Department of Chinese Language and Literature. They created posters, websites, and interactive analytical tools to report their project outcomes which will be displayed on the Digital Scholarship Projects Site and the Digital Scholarship Lab. The students also shared their projects in a presentation session on 14 February 2023, which served as the opening event in the Love Data Week 2023.

E-Resources Week 2023

The E-Resources Week 2023 was held from 6 to 15 March 2023 for CUHK students and staff to know more about the featured databases subscribed by the Library. Eight online workshops have been conducted, including seven featured databases and one JULAC Webinar. All CUHK students and staff were welcome to join the online workshops and complete post-workshop quizzes for a lucky draw. Positive responses have been received.