Since its establishment as the island’s first public library in 1914, the National Taiwan Library (NTL) has grown into one of the foremost treasure houses of documents concerning Taiwanese history. Now located in a modern structure in Zhonghe District of New Taipei City in northern Taiwan, the NTL is also the largest public library in the nation and a model for the new facilities and services that the Republic of China (ROC) government is bringing to libraries around the country. This year, the institution organized a series of events to celebrate its centennial and demonstrate its commitment to preserving the history of the island. These events also highlighted the vital role that the NTL plays in the promotion of Taiwan studies as well as the institution’s rich and complex past.
In many ways, the evolution of the NTL mirrors the modern history of Taiwan. The institution was established during the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945) as the Imperial Taiwan Library. It was originally located in Taipei City near the Japanese governor-general’s office, which today is the Presidential Office Building. The library’s first home was destroyed in 1945 during an Allied bombing raid toward the end of World War II that also damaged the governor-general’s office. The library would later be housed for more than half a century in other buildings in Taipei City before moving to its current facility in Zhonghe in 2004.
After Taiwan’s return to Chinese sovereignty, the library underwent several administrative and name changes. The institution was known as the Taiwan Provincial Administrative Executive Office Library between 1945 and 1948, and the Taiwan Provincial Taipei Library from 1948 until 1973, when it became a branch of the National Central Library (NCL), which is located in Taipei City. Last year, it was renamed the NTL and joined the NCL and the National Library of Public Information (NLPI) in central Taiwan’s Taichung City as one of the ROC’s national-level libraries.
NTL director Chen Hsuch-yu (陳雪玉) says that the library has a unique status due to its large number of historical records. “We inherited a very impressive collection of materials such as official reports, survey results and periodicals from the Japanese colonial era,” she notes. “These documents are invaluable for researching the period of Japanese rule in Taiwan.”
As part of the NTL’s centennial events, an exhibition was held from early August to the end of September that displayed 100 of the library’s most prized possessions from its more than 200,000 historical documents. Most of the treasures on display were from the Japanese era, though there were also some items dating back to the periods of Dutch colonization (1624–1662) and Qing court rule (1684–1895).
The National Taiwan Library, which is located in New Taipei City, northern Taiwan, is the country’s largest and oldest public library. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
Many of the library’s pre-1895 documents were purchased from book collectors or sellers in Taiwan and Japan during the Japanese colonial period. Among the 100 items exhibited was a book featuring 24 paintings of indigenous Taiwanese people from the western plains of the island. The book, which was purchased in Tokyo in 1921 by the library’s Japanese director Tamesaburo Ota, contains hand-painted replicas of images produced in the 1740s under the patronage of a Qing court official in Taiwan. The pictures in the book depict activities and events such as farming, hunting, weaving and weddings.
Another invaluable historical document featured in the exhibition was the book Neglected Formosa, or ’t Verwaerloosde Formosa in Dutch, which was published in 1675 in Amsterdam. The author, Frederik Coyett (1615–1687), was the last Dutch governor of Taiwan. In 1662, the forces of Zheng Cheng-gong (鄭成功, 1624–1662), also known as Koxinga, drove out the European colonizers. Imprisoned and later sent into exile for many years over his failure to hold Taiwan, Coyett wrote the book under a pseudonym in a bid to explain the defeat and clear his name. He included documents intended to show the incompetence of those in charge of the Dutch East India Company’s Asian colonial headquarters in Batavia—modern-day Jakarta, Indonesia—and the inadequate support that his forces received. The NTL’s collection includes a first print edition of the book as well as a copy of an English translation that was published in Taiwan by the Japanese governor-general’s office.
Interest in materials such as these has grown significantly in recent decades. Prior to the lifting of martial law in 1987, Sinology was the dominant field of study among scholars of history and sociology in Taiwan. However, with the nation’s subsequent democratization and liberalization, many academics began to focus on Taiwan’s own history and culture.
Supporting Research
In order to promote the discipline, the library established the Taiwan Study Research Center in 2007. In addition to assisting domestic and international scholars, the center organizes forums and releases publications such as the bimonthly Newsletter of Taiwan Studies and the biannual Research in Taiwan Studies. “We’ve digitized our collection of documents related to the field,” Chen notes, referring to the NTL’s digital archive of books and periodicals from the Japanese colonial period. Furthermore, the center subsidizes master’s and doctoral theses in Taiwan studies, and conducts cooperation and exchange programs with academic institutes in other countries, including Japan, mainland China, the Netherlands and South Korea.
Another unique facility at the NTL is the Taiwan Book Hospital. The institution has been home to a workshop for fixing, mounting and binding books since the Japanese colonial era. In 2007, the book hospital was formally established with new equipment for restoration techniques such as acid and mold removal. This specialized facility is the only one of its kind in Taiwan. “Each year, about 300 books are repaired or restored at the book hospital,” Chen says. “Book repair and maintenance are key aspects of our librarian and volunteer training programs.”
A book undergoes repair work at the NTL’s Taiwan Book Hospital. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
The NTL also plays a leading role in the development of local libraries around the island. Statistics from the NLPI show that as of the end of 2013, there were 529 local government-run public libraries, including branches, in the country. “While the NLPI is responsible for assisting these libraries in upgrading their facilities, the NTL helps them expand their collections, install new computer software and offer specialized services for different age and social groups,” says Chen, who also heads the Public Library Committee of the NCL-based Library Association of the Republic of China (Taiwan).
In many ways, the NTL is a template for the new services that it is helping bring to public libraries around the nation. The library, which has a total floor space of around 60,000 square meters, has specialized reading areas for young children, high school students and the elderly. It operates a service center on behalf of the Ministry of Education (MOE) that provides visually impaired people with resources such as audio materials, braille books and reading machines. There is also a section that caters to the increasing number of foreign residents in Taiwan by offering reading materials in languages such as Burmese, Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese.
Thanks to the assistance of the NTL, 147 public libraries around Taiwan now have specialized reading areas for seniors, 126 have such facilities for high school students and 129 have them for foreign residents. “Due to efforts to expand the sizes of collections at public libraries, the number of books per capita increased from 1.29 to 1.68 between 2008 and 2013, while borrowed books per capita rose from 2.02 to 2.80 during the same period,” Chen says, referring to the progress that has been made since the MOE launched a project in 2008 to improve the nation’s public libraries.
Though the NTL has adopted the latest technologies and added services to meet the needs of an evolving society, it has never lost sight of its history. Alongside the library’s main building stands an open arched walkway constructed of red bricks in a style reminiscent of traditional Taiwanese buildings. Chen notes that the walkway was installed at the suggestion of noted historian Lin Heng-tao (林衡道, 1915–1997), who received the Executive Yuan’s National Cultural Award for lifetime achievement in 1994 for his contributions to the preservation of historic buildings. “He wanted visitors to have an awareness of the library’s history and development,” the director says. Due to the dedication of its many talented professionals, the NTL has become an institution that honors the past while it looks to the future. Today, it stands as a symbol of Taiwan’s commitment to preserving its rich history.
Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw