National Chung Hsing University Library-Taiwan Agricultural History Digital Archives During the Japanese Colonial Period

This project aims to build a digital archive of Taiwan Agricultural History during the Japanese Colonial Period (1895-1945), so as to support educational, agricultural research and serve as an international scholarly exchange purpose. It is planned to digitalize the collections of Taiwan Agricultural history, which were left behind by the Taihoku Imperial University branch during the Japanese Colonial Period. The scope of the collections covers agronomy, forestry, natural sciences, philosophy, literature and linguistics. There are approximately thirty to forty thousand volumes in the collection, including academic books, periodicals, textbooks, and 673 volumes of hand-written theses of that time. Based on the preliminary studies carried out by a group of professors and experts in related fields, 102 out of 673 theses were chosen as important articles which are extremely useful in providing profiles of Taiwan’s agricultural status and evidence of certain historical values and will be the main source for the digitization task. Through the completion of a comprehensive digital database, for the 102 valuable theses, it is expected that such database can significantly benefit researchers in the corresponding fields.