International Information & Library Review

ISSN: 1057-2317 (Print) 1095-9297 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ulbr20

The Calligraphy Connections Project: Reviving

Historical East Asian Texts

Steve H. Ching & Brad New

To cite this article: Steve H. Ching & Brad New (2020) The Calligraphy Connections Project:
Reviving Historical East Asian Texts, International Information & Library Review, 52:2, 108-116,
DOI: 10.1080/10572317.2019.1658500

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Published online: 06 Sep 2019.

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INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION & LIBRARY REVIEW
2020, VOL. 52, NO. 2, 108–116
https://doi.org/10.1080/10572317.2019.1658500

The Calligraphy Connections Project: Reviving Historical East Asian Texts

Steve H. Ching and Brad New
Run Run Shaw Library, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Historical texts have much to offer young researchers in Hong Kong and Mainland China. ACRL Framework for
Yet, many students feel that such resources are of no value to them. Consequently, aca- Information Literacy for
demic library usage rates for historical East Asian texts are low, and continue to drop. In Higher Education; archival
collections; Calligraphy
Hong Kong and Mainland China, however, there still remains a widespread appreciation of Connections Project;
Chinese calligraphy. Through leveraging this interest, academic libraries in East Asia can cultural heritage; learning
motivate university students to engage with historical texts and discover what they have to engagement; Siku
offer. This paper will recount and reflect upon the Calligraphy Connections Project, an Quanshu (SKQS)
initiative aimed at getting students to engage with historical East Asian texts through the
creation of calligraphy artworks, which were subsequently exhibited to the public.

Introduction funding, through to mounting artworks and the

The Calligraphy Connections Project (CCP) is a
cross-institutional, library based initiative estab-
lished by the Run Run Shaw Library, City
University of Hong Kong (CityU) and
Calligraphantasy, a CityU student calligraphy
club. The CCP has been developed with the pri-
mary aim of exposing students to classical East
Asian texts, and, through this, facilitating a
hands-on, cross-disciplinary learning experience.
Based on their research, project participants cre-
ate their own calligraphy works, which they then
get the opportunity to share with others through
exhibitions and seminars.
The first large scale CCP event took place dur-
ing the 2017/18 academic year, and was initiated
as a collaboration by librarians from CityU and
Central South University (CSU) of Changsha,
China. The preparation stage took place over a
half-year period, before culminating with the
three day event, which included seminars, educa-
tion trips, and an exhibition at the CSU campus.
Beyond dealing with the logistical side of things,
librarians ran the event, and acted as guides to
students who attended. From the earlier develop-
ment of exchange funding plans and sponsorship
later publication of these works in an exhibition
book, librarians were active, and very busily so,
throughout the project.
Student learning engagement in libraries
As well as being resource providers, librarians
can play an active role in students’ learning.
Recent decades have seen a shift in librarians tak-
ing on more roles as content and service pro-
viders. This shift has enabled students to better
utilize library resources and space, which now-
adays may include a whole range of digital tools,
and provides more extracurricular learning
options. In 2014, early adopters of the students
engagement approach in libraries, Ohio State
University, challenged other librarians to trans-
form from the traditional collection-centered
model to a model which champions engagement
(Dıaz, 2014). Such a transformation is judicious
given the constant and rapid technology develop-
ments and the ever-changing library setting.
In response to the rise of digital culture, the
University of Southern California (USC) library
developed the USC Sidney Harman Academy for
Polymathic Study (University of Southern

CONTACT Steve H. Ching hsching@cityu.edu.hk Run Run Shaw Library, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/ulbr.
ß 2019 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

California Libraries, 2019). The polymath is
someone who has mastered and integrated more
than one skill or area of knowledge. This is an
endeavor that the academy feels to be of value in
today’s dynamic and interconnected digital world.
The ability to be adaptable and flexible in think-
ing approaches better equips students for today’s,
as well as tomorrow’s, world.
Looking forward they may be, librarians are
always almost by definition working with the
past and its remnants. This is demonstrated by
Rajchel and Snyder (2016), who describe the
library event Who Killed Sarah Stout? A
Participatory Exhibition, which took place at
Haverford College, US, and focused on an actual
cold-case murder mystery. The library exhibition
showcased archival documents of the mystery
and encouraged viewers to try and piece the
puzzle together themselves.
Library exhibitions are a highly effective means
of getting students and the public alike to engage
with texts or resources that they would not nor-
mally seek out or encounter. As such, they are a
particularly valuable method of exposing archival
and special collections. McGill University Library,
Canada, regularly curates library exhibitions from
their Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC)
Library and the Islamic Studies Library, which
includes historical manuscripts and calligraphy
(Swanick, Rankin, & Reinhart, 2015). Concordia
University Library takes an even more student-
centered approach through partnering with fac-
ulty to exhibit the work of the university’s visual
arts students. The library hosts approximately
eight art exhibitions each year. Swanick et al.
(2015) encourage consideration of showcasing
not just library materials, but works produced by
students or even members of the community.
When planning and hosting a library exhib-
ition, the increased workload and pressure placed
on librarians can be offset through collaboration
and partnership with other groups, organizations
or institutions. Working together and making
alliances this way can also magnify, rather than
dilute, the impact of an event. The University of
Florida’s (UF) Health Science Center Library
(HSCL) partnered with a campus student organ-
ization to host the exhibition Opening Doors:
Contemporary African American Academic
INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION & LIBRARY REVIEW 109
Surgeons (Auten et al., 2013). Auten et al. (2013)
maintain that, through partnering with academic
units, community groups and other institutions,
libraries can “extend their influence within a
campus” and “address overall community well-
being.” After hosting a number of exhibitions,
which notably crossed the standard perceived
divides of science/humanities and academia/
popular culture, and conducting surveys with
attendees, Auten et al. (2013) concluded that the
exhibitions not only attracted more people to the
library, but also positively altered perceptions of
the library itself.
Chinese calligraphy and traditional
cultural heritage
The CCP has been built around the centerpiece
of Chinese calligraphy due to its long history and
wide influence across all areas of Chinese, and
much of East Asian, thought and scholarship. Art
and science, today seen as distinct or even oppos-
ing areas of knowledge, mingle and blur through-
out the long recorded history of calligraphy,
which is itself a sort of manifestation of these
two different modes of looking at the world.
Calligraphy has long been regarded as a shared
component of culture across East Asia and
remains well-appreciated for its unique beauty. It
is listed by UNESCO as an intangible heritage
that should be preserved (United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization,
n.d.). In the CCP, students explore historical East
Asian texts (written in Chinese calligraphy) to
discover something that resonates with them.
Once such a text is found, students will replicate
it, as is the practice of Chinese calligraphy writ-
ing. Through the selection and the style that they
choose to execute it in, the calligraphy writers
express their own thoughts, feelings and beliefs.
Through the CCP, libraries are able to expose
and disseminate the ancient East Asian collec-
tions. This is important, particularly in Hong
Kong, for a number of reasons. Over the last few
centuries Hong Kong has had a highly diversified
population consisting of a large number of differ-
ent cultures and ethnicities. Multiculturalism,
particularly between East Asian and Western cul-
tures, runs deep. Hong Kong, like many of the
110 S. H. CHING AND B. NEW
world’s larger cities, continues to modernize, with
technology saturation on the rapid increase.
Certainly, the city is quite prosperous in no small
part because of these two factors. However, trad-
itional culture has diluted as a result, and there
are concerns that this trend will only increase
into the future.
Additionally, because of the long span of time
which separates many of these texts and today,
most are considered profoundly irrelevant, if they
are considered at all. Moreover, the historical
texts are written in old, difficult to read, forms of
Chinese, whereas the language of instruction in
Hong Kong’s universities is English. These factors
only work to magnify the perceived irrelevance of
these texts. This is a perception which they can-
not afford. Books with low usage rates are under
threat in Hong Kong, where land resources are
limited and storage space comes at a premium.
Due to their low access rates, some of these texts
have been transported to offsite storage facilities.
The goal of the CCP is not, however, to get
students to simply indulge in some far-gone and
nostalgic past. It is to inspire creative and aca-
demic learning attitudes, and help them see how
classical East Asian texts can be relevant and use-
ful. For the 2017/18 CCP the chosen theme for
students to think about when researching and
creating their work was Sustainability. The three
major pillars of East Asia’s (in particular,
China’s) historical culture are Daoism,
Confucianism, and Buddhism. Many (arguably
all) historical East Asian texts have been influ-
enced to some degree by one or more of these.
All three emphasize values such as respect and
harmony and have their own unique philosoph-
ical or spiritual insights which are relevant to
today’s conversations on sustainability.
The Siku Quanshu empowered by text mining
Working with the theme of sustainability, stu-
dents were directed by librarians to the Siku
Quanshu (SKQS). Compiled in the late 18th
Century by the Chinese Qianlong Emperor, the
SKQS is a massive encyclopedic collection con-
sisting of 36,381 volumes which brings together
many of the greatest texts from throughout
Chinese and East Asian history. The encyclopedia
is a Chinese cultural icon and a great repository
of historical East Asian knowledge. In the late
1990s a visionary community leader from Hong
Kong collaborated with scholars to transform the
handwritten copies of the SKQS into a digitized
database (Siku Quanshu [Wenyuange Edition]
Online Subscription Service). This was a pioneer
campaign to modernize ancient classics. As a
result, an integrated SKQS digital database was
established which consisting of around 800 mil-
lion characters.
Unfortunately, despite its important place in
Chinese cultural history, due to the issues out-
lined above, the SKQS is considered increasingly
irrelevant by students. Consequently, a distinct
drop in the reading rate of the SKQS e-database
has been observed. As a result, some libraries in
Hong Kong have changed the database access
conditions, from permitting multiple users to
concurrently use the database, to now allowing
only a single user at any given time. Worse still,
some universities facing limited land resources
have moved print versions of the SKQS
off campus.
The combination of the SKQS’s age, scale and
scholarly sophistication can give students, or any-
one really, the impression that working with the
text is surely to be the most formidable of tasks.
This would seem doubly true when one is search-
ing for a specific theme such as sustainability. To
help students with this, CCP librarians tutored
them in the appropriate text mining techniques.
Text mining enables students to directly search,
explore, cross-check and trace the development
of ancient scholarly works. Through recognizing
the network of connections that exist between
these historical, even ancient, texts, students
could appreciate the value of information and
intellectual property, which worked to strengthen
the sense of a historically linked cultural identity.
Breakdown of the Calligraphy
Connections Project
The CCP climaxed with a three day event with
the exhibition as the central component, but this
was by no means the entirety, or even the con-
clusion, of the project. Based from the perspective
of the students’ experience, three distinct phases

Figure 1. Students appreciating the ancient calligraphy carvings during an education trip to Wuxi Stele Forest and Yuelu
Academy, Hunan province, China.
of the project can be distinguished. The first
phase was research and artwork creation. This
process took place over three months, and
involved guidance by librarians on how to best
utilize and access resources, the interpretation of
these resources, and other general assistance
regarding research. The CCP is an extracurricular
activity that does not factor in to their formal
course studies, so other than when students
sought advice from librarians, their efforts were
self-directed. This phase ended with the
completion of their final artwork and an
accompanying essay.
The second phase was the three day education
and exhibition event which took place at the
CSU campus in Changsha, China. This was the
presentation and dissemination phase, when stu-
dents had the chance to showcase and unpack
what they had learnt in phase one. Additionally,
through the education trips to significant histor-
ical sites and museums, which included guided
tours, and the talks by scholars at the seminars,
this phase was intended to further refine the stu-
dents’ cultural and historical calligraphy know-
ledge (Figure 1). All of the students’ travel
preparations for this phase, which included guid-
ance by the librarians for gaining grant funding
and applying the correct visas, took place in
phase one.
The third and final reflective phase encom-
passed all that happened after the trip, including
the publication of an exhibition book. In this
INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION & LIBRARY REVIEW 111
phase students were encouraged to write reflec-
tions on their learning journeys thus far. They
were also directed to ensure that their citations
and texts were up to publication standards.
Student feedback
It is not uncommon for libraries across Hong
Kong and China to have exhibitions about
Chinese calligraphy or other aspects of East
Asian history and culture. However, these exhibi-
tions tend to feature works by scholars or famous
calligraphers for students to view. Rarely do they
feature the works of students themselves. There is
no doubt that students can gain something from
such exhibitions, but by giving them the oppor-
tunity to showcase their own work, their role as
information consumers is advanced to that of
information contributors, a transformation
espoused in the ACRL’s Framework for
Information Literacy for Higher Education (2015).
Of course, students must first study texts by
scholars in order to produce their own, so being
first a competent information consumer is
imperative to becoming a capable contributor.
Having their work on show within a university
campus, accessible by the public through to
scholars, was an energizing motivational force for
students which differs from the typical motivator
in a university context—grading.
The research and artwork creation phase took
place over three months, and can be roughly out-
lined using the example of an accounting student
112 S. H. CHING AND B. NEW
Figure 2. Passage from Records of the Grand Historian, written
by CCP participant.
from CityU who participated in the CCP. The
student started by seeking guidance from a CCP
librarian on text mining techniques for better
navigating the SKQS database. Having acquired
the necessary skills, the student then searched,
evaluated and compared texts relevant to the
theme of sustainability, before selecting a passage
from Records of the Grand Historian, a book
compiled within the SKQS. The book was origin-
ally written by Sima Qian (司 馬 遷 ), a historian
of the Han Dynasty, 91 BC. The selection was
made based on the student’s interpretation of it
as an ancient description of a circular economy,
which was a concept relating to his major. Of
this process, he writes,
I felt that the themes of the quoted paragraph were
similar to Adam Smith’s views, which still make up
the foundations of today’s economics studies. I read
the text almost immediately after hearing this quote. I
found it difficult to understand because of the
obscure classical Chinese language used. I needed to
translate the text, although the context, which I had
no knowledge of, was crucial for this. This challenge
made me realize the power of cross-
disciplinary studies.
The student was later able to share his
thoughts, developed through the research, to
other students and scholars at the seminars in
the second phase of the CCP. His work is pic-
tured in Figure 2.
The above example demonstrates how a stu-
dent was able to link the CCP, and its theme of
sustainability, with his own major. This uniting
of disciplines, between art, history and culture,
and the individual majors of CCP participants,
was not limited to this case only. It was, in fact,
common among participants to do this. A CCP
participant doing a computing mathematics
major reflected,
During my computing mathematics classes, I found
that many models such as Binary Tree and Binary
Search were based on the binary system. I later
learned that Gottfried Leibniz, the creator of the
system, once mentioned that Chinese ancient
documents had similar systems recorded. As a result,
I went on to recreate a piece of artwork from I-Ching
to reflect the connections between ancient Chinese
classics to the modern computing mathematics. This
interesting finding inspired me to conduct more
research on ancient classics.
As well as seeing students make expanded con-
nections between their own disciplines and the
wider East Asian cultural and historical land-
scape, the CCP encouraged a cross-pollination of
ideas amongst students from different disciplines

Table 1. Student study backgrounds for the 2017/18 CCP.
Department/College
Accounting
Architecture and Art
Business
Civil Engineering
Cultural Industry Management
Electric Engineering
Finance
Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management
Information Science and Engineering
Law
Linguistics
Literature and Journalism
Materials and Engineering
Mathematics
Mathematics and Statistics
Medicine
Metallurgy and Environmental Engineering
Resources and Environmental Engineering
Total number of students by university
Total number of student artists/authors
who were all brought together under the banner
of the CCP. The 51 students who participated in
the project from the two universities came from
a total of 18 different departments/colleges, as
shown in Table 1.
In addition to the eclectic mix of students’ aca-
demic backgrounds, the second phase of the CCP
also included student participants from cultural
backgrounds other than China and Hong stu-
dents inevitably had a multicultural experience
that expanded beyond the intentions of the offi-
cial activities and events. Speaking of this, a
Hong Kong student wrote, “The Calligraphy
Connections Project helped me to go beyond my
familiar environment and engage with other peo-
ple’s culture. I had the opportunity to translate
speech for a non-Chinese speaker, and learn first-
hand about people from different backgrounds.”
A student from a Pakistani background very
beautifully reflects,
This unique opportunity of learning with students
and professors from different cultural backgrounds
such as Australia, Hong Kong and different parts of
China enabled me to meet people with different
ranges of abilities and exchange ideas and
experiences. For instance, the Chinese and Korean
scholars shared their insights about the strokes and
beauty of Chinese Calligraphy. I shared my Islamic
calligraphy with all of them [Figure 3]. I believe that
working with my fellow students allowed the
difference in our ideas and thoughts to flourish. As a
result, it created better mutual understanding between
us. It also increased my passion towards my new goal
to research more about Chinese Calligraphy and my
INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION & LIBRARY REVIEW 113
Number of students from CityU Number of students from CSU
6 –
– 20
– 2
– 3
1 –
1 –
5 –
1 –
– 1
– 1
– 1
– 1
1 1
2 –
– 1
– 1
– 1
– 1
17 34
51
curiosity to uncover the hidden meaning or reasons
behind the captivating calligraphy around the world
from multiple perspectives.
Reflection
The three phases of the CCP, whilst integrated, in
general did emphasize different skills and teach-
ings. The first phase, research and artwork cre-
ation, was as much about having students
improve their knowledge of historical East Asian
texts, as it was develop their practical information
search and navigation abilities. The Siku Quanshu
contains a variety of text types, such as philoso-
phy, poetry, history, divination, and military strat-
egy, with each offering their own specific insights.
All texts included within the Siku Quanshu hold a
more or less significant place in Chinese cultural
history. However, students were reminded that the
degree of importance which a text is deemed to
hold does not necessarily translate to an appropri-
ateness with the theme of sustainability. The
ACRL Framework (2015, Authority is Constructed
and Contextual) asserts this point, stating,
“Information resources … are evaluated based on
the information need and the context in which
the information will be used”, and urges students
to “recognize that authoritative content may be
packaged formally or informally and may include
sources of all media types.” It is entirely possible
that a relatively obscure Ming Dynasty poem may
hold greater resonance for today’s sustainability
114 S. H. CHING AND B. NEW
conversations than a famous passage from the
Analects of Confucius.
It is true that most of the students who took
part in stage one of the CCP were already
Chinese calligraphy hobbyists, so the claim can-
not be made that the project attracted students to
calligraphy per se. Nevertheless, the second phase
did see participation by a number of students
with very little Chinese calligraphy experience.
Students who participated in this stage fall under
two categories: those who had taken part in
phase one and had work in the exhibition, and
those who had not taken part in phase one, but
attended stage two to learn firsthand about callig-
raphy. Regardless of experience level, all students
who attended the three day education and
Figure 3. Student shares her transliteration of Chinese
Proverb, 天 人 合 一 , into Arabic calligraphy. In English, this
roughly translates to “Nature and man together in harmony.”
Figure 4. Scholar discusses calligraphy artwork with student at the exhibition opening ceremony.
exhibition event in Changsha benefitted from the
opportunity to be part of a physical community
of like-minded and enthusiastic students, scholars
and Academicians from Hong Kong, Mainland
China and Korea (Figures 4 and 5). Students
with work in the exhibition were able to receive
direct feedback on their work and ideas. Some
even made presentations and disseminated their
ideas at the seminars. In this way, students were
led to “acknowledge they are developing their
own authoritative voices in a particular area and
recognize the responsibilities this entails” (ACRL
Framework 2015, Authority is Constructed and
Contextual). The other students, some with little
calligraphy knowledge, also benefited from paying
witness to this, as they were better able to under-
stand how Chinese calligraphy is evaluated, and
relevant ideas discussed. Regardless of their
experience, all students were encouraged to
“contribute to scholarly conversation at an appro-
priate level” (ACRL Framework 2015, Scholarship
as Conversation). This phase sought to create a
platform to facilitate scholarly conversation on
contemporary sustainability issues from within a
historical East-Asian framework.
In the final phase of the CCP, phase one partici-
pants had their works published in an exhibition
book and phase two participants wrote reflections
on their experience in Changsha. Proper citation
practice was emphasized in this phase, with stu-
dents led to acknowledge the importance of giving
credit to the ideas and their original creators
which helped inform their own. This way, and

Figure 5. Scholar demonstrates calligraphy writing to student onlookers at seminar.
particularly with the book publication, students
could feel that they were entering into the lineage
of East Asian thought, becoming “contributors to
scholarship rather than only consumers of it”
(ACRL Framework 2015, Scholarship as
Conversation). Students were also required to
refine their artwork concepts to be included in the
book. This process engendered further self-critique,
resulting in further deepening of their understand-
ings even after the completion of the artworks.
Conclusion
The Calligraphy Connections Project has thus far
proven itself as an effective means of engaging
students with historical East Asian texts. By set-
ting an important and topical theme, sustainabil-
ity, students were able to place their explorations
of these resources within a contemporary context.
Many students tied their works in with their own
disciplines and gained some interesting insights as
a result. Additionally, the project served to create
a community which linked students together with
those from different disciplines and cultural back-
grounds, fostering an environment amenable to a
cross-pollination of ideas and perspectives. It is
hoped that, through recognizing the connections
that can be made amongst the multitude of differ-
ent disciplines and understandings brought to the
CCP by participants, and the seemingly esoteric
practice of Chinese calligraphy, students will
extend this recognition to that of the intercon-
nected nature of the information landscape.
The CCP aims specifically at getting students to
INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION & LIBRARY REVIEW 115
engage with historical East Asian texts, and to feel
that ongoing engagement and future utilization of
these resources is something worth doing. This
aim, however, can be more broadly generalized as
a desire to lead students to think outside of the
box and to recognize the potential value of using
different and unconventional resources - a desire
which we are sure all librarians share in.
Acknowledgments
My deep thanks also goes to Academician Yangsheng Xu,
Yuming Wang, Jishan He from the Chinese Academy of
Engineering; Academician Chung-in Lee from Academy of
Engineering (Republic of Korea); and calligraphy master
(Nam Doo-Ki) from Seoul National University for
providing live tutorial and demonstration for students.
Funding
We would like to thank South Central University for pro-
viding financial sponsorship to City University of Hong
Kong students.
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