CUHK Library E-newsletter

The word university has shared etymological roots with universality: we are a community for the whole of society, committed to furthering knowledge for the benefit of the citizens of Hong Kong, China as a whole, and the wider world.

Partnering with overseas friends

CUHK recognises the value of diversity as an essential element of excellence. In the run-up to International Women’s Day (8 March), the Library hosted an opening ceremony for the ‘Her Rights: Money, Power, Autonomy’ Exhibition, in partnership with the Gender Studies Programme at CUHK. The Consul General of Sweden formally opened the exhibition, which told the history of Sweden’s gender equality journey and explored wider questions on economic gender equality.

Amidst Sweden’s long list of women who commanded respect, Queen Christina (1626–1689) was one of the wittiest and most erudite figures of the 17th century. Although Christina was diplomatic and maintained generally positive relations with her peers, she was not afraid to speak her mind and chastised Louis XIV of France for revoking the rights of Protestants.

Louis XIV, the “Sun King”, was one of the most powerful rulers in Europe and sought domination over his neighbours in a series of wars. The palace he built in Versailles to impress and entertain foreign dignitaries remains synonymous with French style and luxury even today. Louis XIV is on display currently in the Hong Kong Palace Museum (until 4th May), through one of his most splendid portraits, for a temporary exhibition on ‘The Forbidden City and The Palace of Versailles: China-France Cultural Encounters in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’. The tour opens with a letter by Louis to the Kangxi Emperor, whom he addresses as “our very dear and good friend”. Included in the exhibition are five books on loan from the CUHK Library Special Collections, and we are delighted to be the first library to loan items to the Hong Kong Palace Museum for public display. Read more about this in our dedicated article in this edition of the Library newsletter.

Portraits of Kangxi’s descendant Emperor Qianlong and Louis XIV.

The French king wrote to Kangxi in 1688, addressing the Chinese emperor as his very dear and good friend.

Photos: Palace Museum, Palace of Versailles

Showcasing Hong Kong as a research hub

In support of our mission to disseminate of knowledge, we are not only focusing on physical displays, but also actively distributing research digitally by fostering a culture of Open Science at CUHK. Our new institutional research repository, IRIS, enables anyone to view articles published by our researchers, including full-text of many articles where they are Open Access. In the last edition of our newsletter, we introduced Open Books Hong Kong as an Open Access initiative for the university presses of CUHK, City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and The University of Hong Kong (HKU). We have now published 27 titles on the platform (in Chinese language, with one bilingual Chinese-English title). In just over half a year, the platform has attained nearly half a million views of these books! Written by distinguished scholars from around the world, the selected titles represent a vibrant global academic community in the arts, humanities and social sciences. For more information on our exciting plans, please see the profile of our Open Science Librarian Ms. Jenny Lam.
Developing our print collections and e-resources

We continue to build our collections to support education and research at the university. Our new acquisitions include a rare album of William Russell watercolours of Hong Kong’s coastline published in 1881 and an 1862 Chinese-English phrasebook written and published by Tang Tingsha, the agent to Jardine Matheson and Swire. The phrasebook was designed to facilitate transactions between Chinese and foreigners, providing translations and pronunciations in both languages. The Library has also acquired several major e-resources spanning biopharmaceuticals, civil engineering, music, medicine and oil exploration. Our collections do cover the wide range of interests pursued by the CUHK community!
Leading global collaborations: Pacific Rim Research Libraries Alliance (PRRLA)

The universal nature of the pursuit of knowledge requires us not only to build rich collections, but also to foster international connections. To this end, we are facilitating global partnership between research libraries. The CUHK Library takes the helm of the PRRLA for 3 years (2025–2027). Through this alliance, academic libraries located around the Pacific Rim cooperate to improve access to scholarly research materials. The next PRRLA conference will be held in October 2025 at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan on the theme of Preserving Culture, Driving Discovery: PRRLA Libraries in the Age of Digital and AI Innovations. For readers who are interested in AI, please follow our ‘AI Ethics and Governance Lecture Series‘ co-organized by the Library, the Department of Philosophy and the Centre for Perceptual and Interactive Intelligence at CUHK.

In these introductory remarks, we have already come across a queen, a king and an emperor. Please indulge one final royal connection, by way of conclusion. A fortnight after closing in CUHK Library, the ‘Lost and Found in Hong Kong: The Unsung Chinese Heroes at D-Day’ exhibition was re-opened in Trinity House, opposite the Tower of London, by the Princess Royal. Our Library worked in partnership with the CUHK History department and with the D-Day in Hong Kong initiative to help raise awareness of this historical discovery, the only known primary source on Chinese participation in the Normandy Landings. We trust this work contributed towards fulfilling the motto of the exhibition, coined by Professor Ambrose King, former Vice-Chancellor of CUHK: ‘Hong Kong Sees the World, the World Sees Hong Kong’ (香港看見世界，世界看見香港).

Benjamin Meunier
University Librarian