The newly formed Society of Classical Chinese Documentation held its first meeting at TKU last Wednesday (December 10). Fifteen executive officers were elected, with Professor Wu Che-fu of TKU as chairman. Professor Chen Wen-hua of the Chinese Department, TKU, was elected supervisor.

Professor Wu points out the significance of the establishment of the Society. Taiwan is one of the four centers holding a vast amount of classical Chinese documents. However, due to the shortage of professionals, the preservation of these precious documents has been difficult.

At present the members of the Society mainly come from the faculty and students of the graduate institute of documentation, and of the departments of Chinese and History. In the future the Society will pursue cooperation with the National Library and the National Palace Museum.

As chairman, Professor Wu considers his first task to be promoting cooperation between private sector publishers, the Government, academia, and interested persons so that they will work together to modernize and categorize the classical documents. The aim is to create easy access to these documents for future researchers of documentation.