Jidong Yang

Jidong Yang manages the Harvard-Yenching Library, one of the largest collections in Asian languages in the United States. He hold a BA in History from Peking (Beijing) University in China, an MA in Library and Information Science from Rutgers University, and a Ph.D. in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining Harvard Library in 2022, he served as the Chinese Studies Librarian at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Head of the Asia Library at the University of Michigan, and Head of the East Asia Library at Stanford University.

Selected publications:

Editor, Beyond the Book: Unique and Rare Primary Sources for East Asian Studies Collected in North America. Ann Arbor: Association for Asia Studies, 2022.

“Modern Libraries,” in Jack W. Chen, et al., eds., Literary Information in China: A History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021), pp. 437-446.

“Transportation, Boarding, Lodging, and Trade along the Early Silk Road: A Preliminary Study of the Xuanquan Manuscripts,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 135.3 (2015), 421-432.

“The Making, Writing, and Testing of Decisions in the Tang Government: A Study of the Role of the Pan in the ‘Literary Bureaucracy’ of Medieval China,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, 29 (2007), 129-167.

“Replacing hu with fan: A Change in the Chinese Perception of Buddhism during the Medieval Period,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 21.1 (1998), 157-170.

“Zhang Yichao and Dunhuang in the 9th Century,” Journal of Asian History, 32.2 (1998), 97-144.