Book doctor rescues old documents

A specialist in the Chinese capital is working on restoring ancient images of a different kind -- words, not pictures. Sixty-year-old Du Weisheng works as a researcher at the rare book division of China's National Library in Beijing. Over the years, he's been racing against time to rescue ancient tomes and scripts that have been damaged by water, moulding from improper storage and chewed on by rats.

Du Weisheng is in a race against time to rescue old documents that are falling apart.

The book doctor says some of the books he fixes require extreme concentration and patience.

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imagesofadifferentkind--words,notpictures

He uses a special glue and rice paper that are of similar colour to patch up thousands of visible or invisible holes on book pages with the help of a magnifier.

However, this is the easiest part of his job.

Many books have been soaked by flood waters for a long time and have never properly dried.

Most of their pages are stuck together.

Many more older books simply fall into fragmentary pieces once touched.

Du says erosion happens too fast and with a small staff of 19 people in the rare book division, it is impossible to fix all the books that need to be rescued.

Du Weisheng said, "Books we need to fix take up to a third of the collection in the library, which is around 2 million books. A third of that makes it around 700,000 books. About 20 percent of the 700,000 books need urgent fixing, which means more than 100,000 books are in very bad condition. We fix about 1,000 books per year and the best we can do is no more than 2,000. This means it's going to take us a very, very long time before we can finish this task".

During a career spanning 35 years, Du has fixed close to 5,000 ancient books himself.

Du says that the solution for the future is to digitalise all the materials before they are gone.

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National book trading expo opens

In Jinan city, in East China's Shandong province, the 19th National Book Trading Expo is underway. Braving the stress from the global financial crisis, domestic publishers are seeking new ways to sustain growth.

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Oldtimers are proving to be a formidable presence at the expo. Big names like Commercial Press, People's Literature Publishing House, and Sanlian Publishing House are displaying more than two thousand titles. Among those are heavyweight projects like "The Complete Canon of Chinese Literature," and the latest edition of the "Encyclopedia of China," as well as the two-hundred-volume series of "Commentaries on Chinese Thinkers."

Nie Zhenning, the president of China Publishing Corporation said, "Without the current structural reform and operational innovation, these publishers would not be able to release so many high-quality titles in such a short period. Those titles represent the highest levels of China's publishing industry."

Ondisplayattheexpoaremorethanthree-hundred-thousandtitles.

On display at the expo are more than three-hundred-thousand titles. A great number of them fall into the categories of social sciences, literature and arts, and the 60-year history of the People's Republic of China.

Most evident at this year's expo is the increasing integration of traditional publishing operation with the new media. The newly established Zhongnan Publishing Media Corporation is showcasing its first group of publications, ranging from traditional print books to online audio and video.

According to the State Press and Publication Administration, China's publishing sector has seen an impressive growth rate of more than 20-percent over last year. Current efforts are underway to build a number of multimedia publishing conglomerates by 2015.

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