Resource index · 12 collections

Twelve libraries.One door.

Public collections worth knowing about, and where to read them. Every entry below opens the library itself — we keep no copies of their books, scans or texts on this server.

01

Chinese Text Project 中國哲學書電子化計劃
Bilingual · Full text · Free
A bilingual full-text library of pre-modern Chinese writing: thousands of titles, cross-reference search, parallel passages, and English translations for a large part of the canon. The easiest place for an English-speaking reader to start.

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02

Shuge 书格
Chinese · High-resolution scans · Free
A volunteer-run library of scanned classical Chinese books, from rare imprints to modern typeset editions, photographed at archival resolution.

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03

Shidian Guji 识典古籍
Chinese · Full text · Free
A reading platform for classical Chinese literature with automatic punctuation, paragraph division and side-by-side rendering of the original and the modern text.

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04

National Library of China 读者云门户
Chinese · National collection · Free with registration
The National Library’s reader portal, gateway to its digitised classical holdings and to the separate Rare Book and Ancient Book databases.

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05

Wikisource 维基文库
Multilingual · Transcribed text · Free
Community-transcribed public-domain texts, including a large Chinese corpus with proofread page scans held alongside the transcription.

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06

Project Gutenberg
English · Plain text · Public domain
The oldest public-domain ebook library. Most nineteenth-century English translations of the Chinese classics — Legge, Giles, Jennings — sit here in clean, searchable text.

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07

Internet Archive
English · Book scans · Public domain
Scans of out-of-copyright books, including missionary-press editions of the classics and early scholarly translations long out of print.

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08

National Diet Library 国立国会図書館
Japanese holdings · Scans · Open
Japan’s national digitisation programme, with a deep holding of Chinese classics printed in Japan and Edo-period editions that survive nowhere else.

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09

Kanripo 漢籍リポジトリ
Chinese texts · Searchable corpus · Free
A corpus of digitised Chinese classics maintained at Kyoto University’s Institute for Research in Humanities, built for full-text search across the whole Hanji collection rather than for browsing single books.

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10

Kyoto University Rare Materials Archive 京都大学貴重資料
Japanese collections · High-resolution scans · Open
Kyoto University Library’s rare-book digitisation project: Chinese classics preserved in Japanese collections, imaged at a resolution good enough to read annotation and seal marks.

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11

National Palace Museum 故宫典藏资料检索
Chinese · Imperial collection · Open search
The Taipei collection’s object and document search, covering the Qing imperial library and its rare editions alongside the museum’s other holdings.

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12

Chinese Classic Ancient Books 中华经典古籍库
Chinese · Licensed database · Subscription
A licensed scholarly database from Zhonghua Book Company and Gulian Digital Media, offering edited, punctuated and collated editions. Access runs through the publisher, not through us.

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A directory, not a mirror.

This page is a list of links. We do not copy, mirror, re-host or resell any text or scan held by the libraries above. Where a title is offered for download in our own shop, it is a public-domain work that we re-typeset ourselves and can show the provenance of.

Each source sets its own terms of access and reuse. For anything beyond reading — republication, teaching packs, commercial use — apply to the library directly.

Sources

Twelve libraries.One door.

A directory, not a mirror.