Apabi Digital Library is a collection Chinese e-Books. Records for individual books are in the main catalog, but you may also browse Princeton's collection using the link above and choose "dianji tushu". Books are viewed in a special reader application with many useful features for browsing, organizing, and marking up text. The reader may be installed from the link below (It is preinstalled on the public computers in the East Asian Library.)
Please see our user guide for detailed instructions:
Please note: Currently there are problems with off-site access to this database. To access this database off-site please make sure to first activate Secure Remote Access (Sonic Wall) on your device.
Secure Remote Access VPN: Instructions for Windows 10
Secure Remote Access VPN: Instructions for MacOS
Secure Remote Access VPN: Instructions for mobile devices
CADAL (China Academic Digital Associative Library) is a government-sponsored cooperative project of some 120+ academic libraries (2020), about half of which are from China, to create electronic resources for the use of their patrons. The venture is led by and housed in Zhejiang University, and most major Chinese academic institutions such as Peking, Qinghua, Fudan and Nanjing universities were participants from the beginning. CADAL originally grew out of a China-American Digital Academic Library venture, but only from the mid-2010s a select group of overseas libraries have received access.
The major resource created by CADAL is a collection of scanned books, both in and out of copyright: 240 thousand ancient texts (including the Xuxiu siku quanshu 续修四库全书), 180 thousand republican works, 155 thousand republican periodical issues, 40 thousand newspaper issues, 800 thousand post-1949 books, 690 thousand works in Western languages, 13 thousand special collection works, 4 thousand videos, 55 thousand audiobooks and 63 thousand images. The collection is constantly increasing. The titles are not full-text searchable; but tables of contents are provided for easy navigation. Lately CADAL has added some special sections for material connected to the Manchuria Railway 满铁 13 thousand titles, modern local gazetteers 17 thousand, material on overseas Chinese 侨批 50 thousand items, and oracle bones from various institutions including from Princeton scanned with Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) technology.
(In addition to the e-books database, the navigation bar also gives access to some other resources: calligraphic works (shufa 书法), a literary timeline (Zhongguo wenxue biannian shi 中国文学编年史), Chinese medicine (zhongyiyao 中医药), and Audio (yinpinku 音频库). Note that the video choice, available only in English, brings one to the main e-books database.)
Access to the books is dependent on the copyright status of the book: while some free access is available, especially to the ancient texts, access to in-copyright books is restricted to registered users at participant libraries: one borrows parts of books, which need to be returned in order to have them become available to other users. Hence, one first has to register (zhuce 注册), and in subsequent visits to log-in (denglu 登录). For this please select 登录/注册 from the upper right of the CADAL home page. To register then click on 快速注册. Please note that it is not necessary to add a mobile phone number 手机号 in order to the register and it is also not necessary to retrieve a verification code if one does not want to connect the personal account to a Chinese mobile phone number. The registration process can be soley finished via a valid email. After registration, the system will ask for an affiliation at the first login. Please choose IP range and select “Princeton University” as your affiliation (suozai danwei 所在单位). The system will connect your account to Princeton for 180 days. For this to work you must be either using the system from a university computer (including within the library), or access the database via the library link at the top of this database description.
Activities one performs when logged-in, including borrowing books, note-taking etc., are visible to all users from search pages etc.: hence, make sure to log-out especially on shared public computers. One is not logged out automatically, even not after days. To log-out, go to one’s personal account page (registeredname’s CADAL in the English, registeredname的CADAL in the Chinese interface), and click on tuichu 推 出. This account page is available in the top navigation bar, and is also the page from where one returns books, see one’s borrowing history, etc. (One can choose to set the interface to English, but only a limited number of top-level screens have been translated.)
Once logged in, and directed to one’s account page, one can perform a simple search in the search box. On the resulting page, one can somewhat refine one’s search by limiting the result to title or author, and by selecting some rough facets of categories (such as ancient books or republican-period books—note that all categories are listed, even if not applicable), tags (biaoqian 标签 ) or publisher.
Under a cover image of each result, one can choose to see more details on the book, or decide to read it by clicking on the book. If choosing to read it, one is brought to a reader interface where one can display the table of contents, navigate forward and backward within a book, and change the display from one page to two pages at a time and vice versa. Printing (by right-clicking, one page at a time) does not work very well—it may be better to take screen shots.
Depending on the copyright status of the book, one will receive a request after viewing a couple of pages to check out the remainder of the chapter (jieyue 借阅). One receives a message that borrowing was successful (if the item was not borrowed by someone else), and can continue to read.
To return the chapter to the CADAL library, navigate to the borrowing page (jieyue in the top navigation bar), where one can see the status of one’s checking in-and-out. Click, if not yet selected, on the weihuan 未还button, and then return chapters by clicking on guihuan 归还 after each chapter one has checked out. And remember to log-out (also possible from this page.)
One can look at one’s notes, tags, comments, messages etc. from the navigation bar, and there may be recommendations listed based upon one’s readings.
This database contains full-text searching of all Cambridge Histories, usually with up to a year delay after the print publication. You can search in all or specific titles, and download individual chapters as needed. The Cambridge history of China, The Cambridge history of Japan, and The Cambridge history of ancient China are included.
A database comprised of the volumes called pishu (皮书) from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), published (often yearly) by the Social Science Academic Press (SSAP). This database should be especially useful for researchers in the economic, political and social sciences of China.
The archive covers all pishu published by SSAP from 1991 onward, and new pishu are uploaded on a monthly basis, between 15-20 new volumes each month. You can see the updated title list here: http://www.eastview.com/Files/UDB-Pishu.xlsx.
You can search within all titles, or by series and/or thematic keyword (click on those headings). The seven series are China Society and Culture (国社会与文化), China Economic Development (中国的经济发展), China Regional Analysis - Provincial (中国地区分析 - 省级), China Regional Analysis - Municipal (中国地区分析 - 市政的), China Regional Analysis - Hong Kong/Macau/Taiwan (中国地区分析 - 香港/澳门/台湾), China Industrial Sectors (中国的工业部门), and Global Economy, Politics, Security (世界经济，政治，安全). Thematic keywords include advertising, ethnology, etc. The database also includes such titles as the Annual Report on Research on Japan (日本研究报告). An explanatory brochure about the database is available from: http://www.eastview.com/Files/EVPishu.pdf .
We have only a selection of these works in paper, and ranges may be spotty. Note that almost all titles are Chinese-only, although they do have English alternative titles.
Searching using the full text filter, you can read (and print) most articles. Sometimes there is a limit of what you can access at one time, but you can follow up with searches for the words at the end of those pages, etc.
Searching using the book title filter, you can read a limited number of pages directly on-line, but in many cases you can then email to yourself 50 pages or 1/5th of the book (whichever is less) at a time.
Some of the books can be purchased by the library for perpetual access; if you think we should purchase a recent book as an e-book please notify the Chinese Bibliographer (displayed in the rightmost column of this page). These will be available from the general catalog.
Apabi Digital Library is a collection Chinese e-Books. Records for individual books are in the main catalog, but you may also browse Princeton's collection using the link above and choose "dianji tushu". Books are viewed in a special reader application with many useful features for browsing, organizing, and marking up text. The reader may be installed from the link below (It is preinstalled on the public computers in the East Asian Library.)
Please see our user guide for detailed instructions:
Please note: Currently there are problems with off-site access to this database. To access this database off-site please make sure to first activate Secure Remote Access (Sonic Wall) on your device.
Secure Remote Access VPN: Instructions for Windows 10
Secure Remote Access VPN: Instructions for MacOS
Secure Remote Access VPN: Instructions for mobile devices
