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Asia Art Archive in America is thrilled to share the recent acquisition of the Josephine Riss Fang Archive by the American Library Association Archives at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Please find below more information on the archive and the journey it took to find its new home.
The Josephine Riss Fang Archive (J.R. Fang Archive) was donated to Asia Art Archive in 2019 by Maria Fang, daughter of Dr. Josephine Riss Fang. Born in 1922, Dr Fang passed away in 2023. The archive consists of 2,455 slides in 10 slide boxes, as well as a variety of ephemeral materials, including articles, handwritten notes, and magazine clippings. Most of the slides were taken at libraries during Dr. Fang’s multiple visits to China between 1974-1988, a period when research trips to the country by Western scholars, including librarians, were rare. After much consideration, it was decided that the archive would find its permanent home at the American Library Association Archives, the world’s oldest and largest national library association with a focus on librarianship.
Archive Overview
Born in Austria in 1922, Dr. Fang received her Ph.D in English from University of Graz in 1948. In 1950 she came to the United States to attend Catholic University where she received a master’s degree in Library Science. She married (Paul) Pao Hsien Fang in 1951. (Paul) Pao Hsien Fang was born in Lijiang, China and obtained a PhD in physics at Catholic University. From 1969 to 1995, Dr. Fang taught in Boston at Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science. There she specialized in international librarianship, preservation management, and publishing. In 1974, Dr. Fang received the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Award that allowed her to become one of the first American librarians to travel to China after twenty-five years of isolation between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Between 1975 to 1988, Fang visited many public and institutional libraries, book stores, printers, schools, and factories in Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, Changchun, Kunming, Harbin, Lijiang, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Wuhan, and Nanjing, among others cities. The materials in the J.R Fang Archive include photographs that Dr. Fang took of library interiors and exteriors, shelving, catalog systems, librarians, students, factory workers, and more. This material offers a rich resource for research on education and libraries during the late 1970s, a period when China was transitioning from the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, which ended in 1976, to a new era of economic reform and opening to the West.
Archive background
The J.R Fang Archive is divided into two parts: materials from before and after the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The documentation from Dr. Fang’s trips to China in the early 1970s shows a variety of library shelving, analog cataloging systems, and group photos with library staff and government officials. These photos include images of Mao Zedong as well as propaganda banners displayed at the various library sites. After her initial trip, Dr Fang wrote an article “Chinese Libraries Carry Out Chairman Mao’s Dictum: Serve the People” published in 1975 by the Wilson Library Bulletin. After the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, Chinese libraries began to change and develop at a rapid and steady pace, reorganizing and reopening library science courses in various universities. The slides from the post-Cultural Revolution period contain images of computers in the libraries, indicating the modernization of library practice. In the following years between 1982 and 1986, Dr. Fang was invited by various universities and conferences to lecture and consult on international librarianship. In China, her role evolved from observer to teacher to facilitator between Eastern and Western Library and Information Science. As such, she was invited to give presentations at Wuhan University, the University of Sichuan, Xian Normal University, Peking University, and the University of Inner Mongolia in Huhehot.
The timing of Dr. Fang’s trips to China was significant, and therefore the materials in this archive offer a rare window into an early and transitional moment in China’s modern history. In 1972 President Nixon’s trip to China ended the 25-year estrangement and almost complete lack of contact between both the governments and people of China and the United States. The end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 and the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States in 1979 brought new and expanded types of academic, business, touristic, scientific, and governmental exchanges, including librarian exchanges. Dr. Fang’s first trip to China in 1974 may have been the first of this kind of librarian exchange. The improving relations between China and the U.S in the early 1970s also meant that Dr. Fang’s husband Pao Hsien Fang, who worked at NASA between 1962-1970, was allowed to visit his family in Lijiang after three decades of separation. In addition to materials about libraries, this archive provides glimpses into a 1974 family reunion in Kunming, China. Dr. Fang and her husband had 10 children.
After receiving the donation from Maria Fang, the team of AAAinA made a preliminary inventory of the slides, a summary report, and digitized a few representative images of the materials. In 2024, AAAinA reached out to the Chinese American Library Association (CALA), of which Dr. Fang was an active member. CALA then put AAAinA in touch with the American Library Association Archives (ALA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. ALA expressed strong interest in the J.R Fang Archive, due to their focus on the history of librarianship, including international librarianship. AAAinA is thrilled to see Dr. Fang’s contributions transferred to a long-term home to be shared with specialized researchers and contextualized within and beyond the framework of librarianship globally.
The preliminary inventory was organized by Cici Wu and Ying Chiun Lee, with assistance from Claire Kim and Jane DeBevoise.
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