Bibliographic records reveal trends in Chinese history scholarship: Evidence from Library of Congress metadata
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47989/ir31iConf64266Abstract
Introduction. Books are key research outputs in the humanities, but often poorly indexed in scholarly databases. This paper presents a preliminary analysis of metadata in the Library of Congress (LC) to analyse scholarship on Chinese history.
Method. We extracted metadata of all 18,564 books on Chinese history from LC published in three major regions, Greater China, the U.S., and Europe, and mapped chronological information of each book onto historical periods.
Analysis. We conducted quantitative analysis on the information to understand the general publication trends of books on Chinese history and their historical period representation, both the overall patterns and the similarities and differences within the three regions.
Results. Two major surges appear in Greater China and U.S. publications, with Greater China leading since the 1980s and the U.S. surpassing Europe by the 1960s. Later periods attract more exclusive attention, while earlier periods are often embedded in multi-dynastic narratives in Western scholarship, though U.S. research has recently diversified.
Conclusion. This study pioneers the use of bibliographic records to analyse Chinese historiography, offering a complement to scholarship focused on canonical works and highlighting the value of library metadata for quantitative humanities research. We share our dataset and code at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/Code-for-Analysis-of-Chinese-History-Collection-in-the-Library-of-Congress-Catalog6BC2.
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