By Rachel Lin and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer
Academia Sinica’s Institute of Modern History and Stanford University’s Hoover Institution on Oct. 8 signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to share archived primary sources for historical research.
The deal promotes archival sharing, joint research and researcher exchanges, with the institutions hoping eventually to deposit copies of selected materials in each other’s collections, officials said at a signing ceremony.
The agreement came three years after a California court ordered the California-based Hoover Institution think tank to end its decades-long legal battle with Academia Historica by returning Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) personal diaries to the nation.
Hoover Institution deputy director Eric Watkin, left, and Academia Sinica Institute of Modern History director Sean Lei hold copies of a memorandum of understanding at a ceremony in Taipei on Oct.8.
Photo courtesy of Academia Sinica
Institute of Modern History director Sean Lei (雷祥麟) said the agreement would significantly ease research work by saving time and resources that would have been spent on traveling between Taiwan and the US.
The Taiwanese institution looks forward to copying and sharing documents, which would make the invaluable academic resource more accessible to researchers and create new opportunities for transnational history, Lei said.
Hoover Institution deputy director Eric Wakin, the director of its library and archives, said that archives should be a common good, not hoarded by any one group or place.
The MOU’s mandate for the two institutions to share resources would open doors for historians hailing from both institutions and enhance global collaboration in scholarship, Wakin said.
The Institute of Modern History, which conducts research on modern Taiwanese, Chinese and East Asian history, runs one of the most important archives in the nation, Academia Sinica said in a statement.
The institute’s archive has gathered more than 5 million hard-copy documents, ranging from diplomatic and economic reports, personal letters and diaries, government internal communiques and maps, the statement said.
More than 17 million digital images are also in the archive’s collection, it said.
The Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford University is dedicated to collecting materials relevant to the study of peace and war and revolutions, the statement said.
The Hoover Institution’s archive contains nearly 7,000 collections from 171 countries, about 1 million volumes of books and journals, and 100 terabytes of digital documents, Academia Sinica said.
The collection includes documents pertinent to the history of Taiwan and modern China, it said.