Digital Images of Biographical Materials of Historical Figures from the Archives of the Ch`ing Historiography Institute

Title slide with the National Palace Museum crest: Digital Images of Biographical Materials of Ch'ing Historical Figures, by Feng Mingzhu, 22 November 2008.
Slide: the Taipei Shiguan archives hold files made by the Qing Historiography Institute and drafts from the Republican institute that produced the Qing shi gao.
Slide: in 1914 Yuan Shikai's government set up the Qing shi guan; its 1926 draft survives largely in Taipei, and the museum is publishing the unpublished parts.
Slide: the database scans the Qing biographical materials in both archives into an index database and a digital images database.
Slide: drafts are the surviving stages of a biography - first compilation, revision, final and fair copy; packets are the materials gathered for one person.
One such packet: five fascicles of Zeng Guofan's deeds and a memorial, laid out beside the wrapper, with brush-written documents below.
Slide: begun in 2005, the database splits into index and digital-image files; by September 2008 it listed 11,920 packets and drafts, the index freely open.
Screenshot of the index search page: fields for any field, document number range, item name, edition and type, with synonym search and search/clear buttons.
Screenshot of the digital-images search page: the same fields, plus links to install the TIFF image viewer in BIG5 or GB versions.
Screenshot of a search for Li Hongzhang: 3 records listed with document type, number, item name and edition, two of them packets in revised editions.