Individual Article:
Chinese journals explore social sciences and humanities
One year ago, it was announced that the Northwestern University community gained electronic access to a collection of thousands of articles from Chinese academic journals on the subjects of politics and finance. Now the Northwestern community has access to thousands more articles--on both a broader group of social sciences and on numerous humanities subjects.
The China National Knowledge Infrastructure is the premier comprehensive database for the study of China. It is composed of various sections, two of which are under subscription with the Library—China Core Newspapers and China Academic Journals (CAJ). It is through the CAJ that the Library has significantly expanded the availability of Chinese scholarship to Northwestern, especially within the humanities.
Access to the resources may be made through NUcat or the Electronic Resources list by typing in the title "China Academic Journals" or simply "CAJ." The initial screen positions the CAJ database link first in a list of resources. On the CAJ screen, the sections available to Northwestern users are checked. Click on "Literature/History/Philosophy..." and nearly twenty subject areas become available for searching. These include: Art Theory and Arts; Chinese Language & Literature; Drama, Film, and Video Art; Music; History (Chinese & world by regions); Philosophy; Religion; and World Literature.
Under each broad topic are listed more narrow subjects. For example, under "Drama, Film, and Video Art" is the sub-topic "Art of Drama." This topic is further divided into the subjects of Art Theory of Drama (387 articles), Stagecraft (136), Chinese and Foreign Drama Art (841), and Undertakings of Drama (159). Or, again, under "Art Theory and Arts" are the sub-topics of Art Theory; Introduction to Art of Different Countries of the World; Painting; Calligraphy; Seal Cutting; Sculpture; Photography; and Arts and Crafts—with a total of more than 5,000 articles. Most of the articles are in Chinese, some are in English.
For details on searching and navigating the database, see "Electronic Access to Chinese Language Articles: The China National Knowledge Infrastructure," in the 2East Newsletter of November, 2004, at
http://2east.northwestern.edu/2004_fall/_article_1.html.
Lucy E. Lyons