Welcome to our blog! Beyond the essential day-to-day work our Asia Library team does—curating the collection, cataloging new materials, and offering reference and instruction support—we're also continuously engaged in special projects, hosting events, and celebrating noteworthy achievements. In this post, we invite you to look back with us at some of the Asia Library's most meaningful moments from the past academic year. We're grateful to share these highlights with our community, and we look forward to another exciting year of learning, discovery, and connection together.
September 2024
- The Asia Library Open House was held on September 16 to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival (Chinese) / Otsukimi (Japanese) / Chuseok (Korean), a traditional East Asian holiday which celebrates the reunion of family, the harvest, and the moon. We enjoyed this community engagement opportunity with more than 120 faculty, students, campus partners, and library colleagues. Our shared professional identity in East Asian studies librarianship and shared cultural identity of Asian Americans were also highlighted through the event.
October 2024
- Yunah Sung (Korean Studies Librarian) and Liangyu Fu (Director of Asia Library) attended the 2024 Overseas Korean Studies Librarians Workshop hosted by the National Library of Korea, October 21-26. U-M was one of the only five U.S. institutions selected to participate in this event.
- Liangyu visited Chinese academic institutions that the U-M Library had partnered with before, including Fudan University Library, Fudan University Press, and Shanghai Jiaotong University Library, to resume conversations on opportunities for future collaboration.
- Co-sponsored by the Asia Library and the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, China Ongoing Perspectives (CHOP) film series hosted a public screening of two documentary films "Up Down" and "A Filmless Festival" on October 29, with special guest screenwriter and director Wang Wo.
November 2024
- On the brink of the 2024 presidential election, CHOP film series presented the documentary film "First Vote" on November 3 with Kaiser Kuo, one of the documentary participants, to address Asian American perspectives on electoral politics.
December 2024
- The tradition of the Asia Library-International Studies joint holiday potluck party was revived this year after a long pause. For many reasons (especially the international food!), this event will qualify for this list forever. We're sorry that this event is only open to library staff and student workers in our departments; you don’t know what you’re missing!
January 2025
- The Japanese Language Program faculty and students organized a New Year’s event at the Oka Tadoku Room on January 25. They celebrated the New Year with language-inspired games, calligraphy, origami, and the first sticker contest with eleven entries.
February 2025
- The Council on East Asian Libraries statistics for FY24 were published online. Our physical collection surpassed 1 million volumes, consolidating our ranking as #1 among BTAA institutions, #2 among public universities, and #4 among all academic libraries in North America.
- Two groups from Japan visited the Asia Library. On February 4, three delegates from the Consulate-General of Japan in Detroit, including the Consul-General, visited us. On February 11-12, two librarians from Shinshu University visited us. Keiko Yokota-Carter (Japanese Studies Librarian) offered Asia Library tours to the guests and facilitated their interactions with other library units.
- In celebration of the International Mother Language Day, the Asia Library joined the International Studies department in hosting the public event “Sing, O Mother Tongue! A Celebration of World Languages Through Poetry” on February 26 at the Hatcher Library Gallery space.
March 2025
- Five staff members and one intern attended the 2025 Council on East Asian Libraries annual meeting and Association for Asian Studies annual conference held in Columbus, OH, March 11-16. They engaged in meaningful and inspiring exchanges with researchers, library colleagues, publishers, and vendors.
April 2025
- Two interns wrapped up their work at the Asia Library. Jisu Han, Korea Foundation intern, finished her 10-month internship which focused on technical processing, collection support, and professional development. Suparna Hande, the Oka Tadoku Room intern, concluded her work over two semesters planning and executing language learning events and promoting Tadoku collection and space. We're very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with them.
May 2025
- Yung-hui Chou joined the Asia Library as our new Chinese Studies Librarian on May 19. Yung-hui earned her MSLIS degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2025, where she served as an assistant for East Asian collections and services at the International and Area Studies Library. With Yung-hui’s arrival, Liangyu Fu wrapped up her twelve-year service as the Chinese Studies Librarian.
June 2025
- The U-M Library received a generous bequest from the estate of Ms. Yun Yu Lee, a U-M alumna (A.M. 1949, A.M.L.S. 1957), to support collection activities for the Asia Library. Ms. Lee’s bequest will allow us to further advance the Asia Library’s commitment to making academic resources accessible and discoverable and to engaging scholarly communities through creative collection and research services.
- Four Asia Library staff reached significant milestones of their service anniversary. Congratulations on these amazing achievements, and our deep gratitude for your dedication to our profession!
- Thirty years of service: Kazuko Anderson (Japanese Acquisitions)
- Twenty-five years of service: Mei Wang (Chinese Cataloger)
- Fifteen years of service: Myung-Hee Kim (Korean Cataloger), Gengna Wang (Chinese Cataloger)
- The International Mother Language Day planning team won the Team Award category of the Library Diversity Award. Congratulations to Soojin Lee (Korean Acquisitions), who represented the Asia Library on the team!
July 2025
- Hao Zhang concluded her 11-month internship as the Curatorial Assistant for Chinese archival materials, during which she successfully processed and preserved a variety of collections and tested the newly created Asia Library Finding Aids website. Her work greatly improved the accessibility and discoverability of our rare and unique collections.
- Keiko Yokota-Carter was featured in the Specialist Spotlight section of the North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources. Her career path reveals a long-time interest in international education and library resources, and has become more digitally-engaged during the changing times.
August 2025
- Dr. Soon-Young Yoon, a U-M alumna (PhD in Anthropology, 1971), visited the Asia Library on August 21. A leading advocate for women’s rights, diversity, and anti-discrimination, Dr. Yoon worked at the UN, WHO, and various NGOs. In 2023, she generously donated books and research materials to the Asia Library.
- The Asia Library started to provide access to selected full-text materials from the National Library of Korea. U-M-affiliated patrons can access these digital resources on a designated computer located in the Asia Library Quiet Study Room (421A Hatcher North).
Thanks to the partnership with Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, and Nam Center for Korean Studies, we continued to receive visiting scholars through the Asia Library Travel Grant program in AY25. They traveled to Ann Arbor from North America, Asia, and Europe to consult our collections for a broad range of research projects.
Sponsored by Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies:
- Yujie Chen, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Dance, Ohio State University
- Zihan Feng, Ph.D. Candidate in Chinese Language and Literature, Washington University in St. Louis
- Dr. Timothy Grose, Associate Professor of China Studies, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
- Dr. Yucong Hao, Mellon Assistant Professor of Asian Studies, Vanderbilt University
- Dr. Ha-kyoung Lee, Associate Professor of Political Science, The Academy of Korean Studies
- Dr. Vivian Li, Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art
- Chutong Liu, Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative Literature, University of Oregon
- Dr. Yihui Sheng, Assistant Professor of Classical Chinese Literature, Chinese University of Hong Kong
- Martin Weiser, Ph.D. student, Free University Berlin, Germany
- Dr. Emily Wilcox, Professor of Chinese Studies, William and Mary
Sponsored by Center for Japanese Studies:
- Dr. Paul Christensen, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
- Seira Duncan, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Eastern Finland
- Saeko Suzuki, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia
Sponsored by Nam Center for Korean Studies:
- Yemok Jeon, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
- Jae Lim, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego