NCL Hosts Reception Banquet at British Library

On November 22, the British Library hosted a reception banquet to mark the closing of this year's Panizzi Lecture. More than a 100 British librarians and Sinologists attended, including British Library director Mr. John Ashworth, as well as the NCL's Mrs. Rui-lan Ku Wu (辜瑞蘭), chief of the NCL Bureau of International Exchange of Publications, and Mr. Wen-hua Cheng (鄭文華), representative of the Taipei Representative Office in the U.K. During the banquet, Director Ashworth and keynote speaker Prof. Glen Dudbridge thanked the ROC for its support and involvement in the lecture activities. Representative Cheng welcomed British scholars to make use of the abundant resources on ancient Chinese books preserved in Taiwan. Mrs. Wu spoke on NCL efforts to establish a bibliographic database of rare Chinese books and invited participation in this effort by the U.K. and other countries. She also presented a memorial plaque to Director Ashworth and encouraged closer cooperation between the British Library and NCL.