Introduction to the General Purpose of Chinese Ancient Books

Traditional Chinese culture has a long history, and its literature has been recorded for thousands of years without interruption. The Chinese nation's canonical literature has always been said to be full of sweat, as vast as the sea, and its richness in number and depth of content are unrivaled in the world. These rich texts not only carry the traditional culture of the Chinese nation, but also have a profound impact on the course of world civilization, and are a valuable cultural heritage of all mankind. Protecting and inheriting the cultural heritage of the Chinese nation requires the present generation to systematically organize and study the existing Chinese ancient books, and first of all, it is necessary to make a comprehensive survey and clean up the documentary resources. In Chinese history, like compiling the "Chinese ancient books catalog" in the national library community, the academic community of ancient literature for the first time in-depth and detailed cleanup. In this sense, the compilation and publication of the General Catalogue of Chinese Ancient Books has a pioneering and summarizing nature, which can be regarded as a major achievement of Chinese ancient book arrangement and research.

Compiling a general catalog that comprehensively reflects the state of circulation and storage of ancient Chinese literature is the ideal of the literature and library circles for many years. China has a tradition of compiling catalogs of historical records and public and private collections, and attaches importance to the guiding role of bibliographic compilation "to identify the chapter of academic, examination of the mirror source and flow". Historical records and public collection directory reflects the accumulation of royal or official books of each dynasty, private collection directory is more reflective of folk literature collection, both have their own limitations, complement each other. The general catalog, which is complete, well-documented, and well-structured, can only be produced in contemporary times when most of the literature is in the public collection and the libraries of various regions and systems carry out joint cataloging. Since modern times, the records of ancient books in the collections of major libraries and the specialized catalogs compiled by experts in various disciplines are the basis for the compilation of the General Catalogue of Chinese Ancient Books. The large-scale bibliographies compiled since the founding of New China, such as the Comprehensive Record of Chinese Books and the Catalogue of Good Chinese Ancient Books, have provided successful examples of literature survey and collection, bibliographic summarization and proofreading for the compilation of the General Catalogue of Chinese Ancient Books.