What is the meaning of the book of classics, history and collected works?

The four main categories of ancient books are the "classics, histories, and collections", which are distinguished by their contents. Some of the large ancient books often include the four departments, and used to name, such as the "Sikuquan", "four series of publications", "four parts of the preparation of" and so on.

See the importance of the four parts of the classification of ancient books. Jing: scriptures, refers to the classic works of Confucianism; history: history books, that is, the official history; son: pre-Qin hundred writings, religion; set: collection, that is, a compilation of poetry and lyrics. Generally refers to China's ancient canonical books.

The four-part classification of "Jing, Shi, Zi and Ji" is a product of traditional Chinese culture and applies to traditional cultural texts. Today, it is still a key for us to familiarize ourselves with ancient books and thus understand traditional culture. Since May 4, China has borrowed the Western book classification method and classified books according to the modern discipline system.

As of October 2013, all kinds of libraries in China are still using the "Chinese Library Book Classification" (CLCB), which was revised in the 1990s. However, as many ancient books are difficult to be included in the CLCB classification system, the traditional four-part classification is still used for the collection and retrieval of the general library of ancient books.

Chinese culture has a long history, and it is difficult to count the number of books that have been produced through the ages. According to incomplete statistics, there are still more than 80,000 kinds of books that have survived to this day. The classification and organization of ancient books also began very early.

The first large-scale organization of ancient books began in 26 B.C., when Emperor Cheng of the Western Han Dynasty, by Liu Xiang, Liu Xin father and son successively presided over, including searching and editing, collating, classifying, cataloging, etc., and finally compiled the earliest national library catalog of China, "Seven Liao".

The "seven outlines" will then search and organize the canonical books are divided into six arts, the sons, the book of war, mathematics and technology, square technology, poetry and fu six categories, plus the general nature of the series of outlines, the general title of the "seven outlines". The book has long been lost, but its basic content is preserved in the Ban Gu's "Han Shu - Arts and Letters", therefore, "Han Shu - Arts and Letters" has become the earliest surviving catalog of ancient books.