Last updated on May 1, 2024
(change log _ korean rare books & textual studies (since 11132023).xls)
Welcome to Korean Rare Books & Textual Studies (KRBATS 코올배츠).
KRBATS is an online resource seeking to serve as:
(1) a one-stop hub that brings together Korean rare books that are currently held by three different units within Harvard University: the Korean Collection at the Harvard-Yenching Library, the Harvard Art Museums, and the Harvard Map Collections; and
(2) an ongoing bibliographic and book-historical research tool for researchers, teachers, educators of, and anyone interested in, Korean antiquarian books and the cultural history of the book in Korea. It charts the whereabouts of Korean antiquarian and rare books held by various libraries and research institutes around the world. It builds an up-to-date bibliography of recent research findings for the understanding of the history of the book in Korea. And it develops a glossary of Korean rare book terminology.
KRBATS is not a brochure of a finished product but a fluid website, a work in progress. New contents are frequently added and existing contents are emended for error correction and restructuring. Due to this dynamic nature of the website, I keep a change log to keep track of what changes I made and to recall under what circumstances I made changes.
To check out information on this website about Korean rare books held elsewhere, go directly to Beyond Harvard: Databases, Libraries, and Online Exhibitions.
Throughout this website, a “book” refers to a diverse range of bibliographical objects. This includes not only a bound set of sheets made of paper that contain writing and images in them, as we are more familiar with today, but also scrolls, slips of paper, rubbings, and other ephemera. "Antiquarian Korean books" refers to books primarily from the pre-20th and the first few decades of the twentieth centuries.
ROMANIZATION
While the primary language of the website is English, the website uses a great deal of romanization to transliterate materials in languages other than English.
The McCune-Reischauer system is used for the transliteration of Korean names and words. McCune-Reischauer is most suitable because it is used in library information management in US libraries, such as the Library of Congress and the Harvard-Yenching Library.
Chinese words and names are transliterated in Pinyin. Japanese words and names are transliterated in Hepburn.
The orthographic diversity or “spelling” of premodern texts written in Hangul is of great importance when navigating original-language materials. Korean Rare books & Textual Studies uses a twofold strategy:
- For referring to book titles written in Hangul, instead of using what appears on the title page (p'yoje), I will use Sino-Korean mediation. For example, "림경업젼," "임경업젼," and "님경업젼" will all be called "Im Kyŏngŏp chŏn," whose Sino-Korean rendition of the titles would be read according with modern Korean pronunciation.
- When spelling things out according with the original is deemed necessary, I will use the Yale Romanization and indicate the use of this variant form by adding "(Yale)."
PRINCIPLE INVESTIGATOR
The PI of this online resource is Si Nae Park (PhD in Asian Studies, University of British Columbia, 2012). Park is a scholar and teacher of the literature and inscriptional practices of pre-20th-century/premodern Korea. She is currently Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. Park's institutional profile is here. She also has an academia.edu profile, here. She is also responsible for Premodern Korean Literary and Historical Texts in English Translation: A Timeline.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This website was made possible thanks to the generous support of Barajas Dean's Innovation Fund for digital Arts and Humanities awarded in 2018. The original project was entitled "The Anatomy of Vernacular Books in Chosŏn Korea," a legacy still reflected in the website's url.
This website is the work of many people. I thank Cole Crawford, Jeremy Guillette, and Rashmi S. Singhal for their technical support and guidance. I thank my graduate and undergraduate students at Harvard for their excellent research assistance: Juwon Kim (RSEA), Alice Liu (Harvard College), Caron Sujean Kim (Harvard College), Catherine Tsai (HEAL), Azalea Lee (EALC), Jeonghun Choi (HEAL), and Junyoung Baik (RSEA). Benjamin Landauer (EALC) provided tremendous help with copy-editing. Special thanks to Mikyung Kang, Librarian for the Korean Collection at the Harvard-Yenching Library, for her initial guidance at the start of this project, her continued support throughout, and her undying dedication to the field of Korean Studies. I thank Gustavo Espada (EALC) for handling the financial side of the website building. I thank Professors Lee Min Heui, Chung Seunghye, Park Younghwan, Jung Min, Sim Kyungho whose insights into premodern Korean humanities that they with me over the years undergird various aspects of this website. I thank Beth McKillop's tireless research and teaching activities and her generous spirit. I thank Cristina Cramerotti and Ali Zouad at Musée Guimet for copious support. Many thanks to Laurent Quisefit at BULAC and Mi-Sug No at Collège de France for their work, their support, and their collegiality.
QUESTIONS?
Please submit any questions HERE.