The “Archives of the Grand Secretariat”, collected by the Institute of History and Philology (IHP) of Academia Sinica, was purchased by the IHP in the early Republican era after several changes of hands and reorganized by the “Grand Secretariat Archives Project”. “Archives of the Grand Secretariat” refers to the documents originally collected by the Grand Secretariat’s archives in the Qing Dynasty. IHP’s current collection contains around 310,000 items. The original documentation of the “Archives of the Grand Secretariat” collected by IHP dates back from the Ming Dynasty to the early Republican Period; with such a plurality of documents, this collection is an extremely significant corpus in Ming and Qing historical studies. Please see “Inventory and History of Preservation” for the specific content of this documentation, as well as for the process of its change-of-hands and re-organization.
In 1996, the “Grand Secretariat Archives Project” began the digitization of the documents in IHP’s collection, creating specific “Metadata Profiles” to provide detailed description and indexes for each document. The “Grand Secretariat Archives Project” has also utilized digital scanning to store the documents’ images. Though this project is still in its process, in order to service readers as early as possible, online access was opened since the March of 2001. All readers can freely browse the catalogs including all “Metadata Profiles”; after registering for an account, readers can also access the document image database. We invite you to visit our databases and websites, and your comments are always welcomed!
In 1996, the “Grand Secretariat Archives Project” began the digitization of the documents in IHP’s collection, creating specific “Metadata Profiles” to provide detailed description and indexes for each document. The “Grand Secretariat Archives Project” has also utilized digital scanning to store the documents’ images. Though this project is still in its process, in order to service readers as early as possible, online access was opened since the March of 2001. All readers can freely browse the catalogs including all “Metadata Profiles”; after registering for an account, readers can also access the document image database. We invite you to visit our databases and websites, and your comments are always welcomed!