Treasures of the Asia Collections

Introduction
The strength of the library's collections parallel the university's academic developments. In the spring of 1868, Andrew Dickson White purchased the 5,000 volume library of the German Sanskritist and philologist Franz Bopp. In 1902, the library received special appropriations for books on the Far East, and Chinese students at Cornell presented some 350 Chinese-language books to the library in 1912. Distinguished private gifts expanded the collections. William Elliott Griffis, an Ithaca minister, presented his collection of about 2,000 Japanese-language books. Charles W. Wason bequeathed the library of over 9,000 volumes that he had acquired in eight years of intensive collecting. Additions to the South Asia collection were supported by gifts from the Cornell Hindustani Association and other alumni and friends. Cornell's strengths in Southeast Asia date back to the 1950s when the library agreed to acquire at least one copy of every publication of research value produced in Southeast Asian countries. Today, the Asia Collections—including the Wason Collection on East Asia, the Echols Collection on Southeast Asia, and the South Asia Collections, all among the finest in the world—are located in the Carl A. Kroch Library. Rare books, manuscripts, and visual materials relating to Asia are housed in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, also in Kroch Library.

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