Research Of The Description Of Chinese Classic

Description of Chinese classic is to analyze, select and record the characters of the style and contend of one ancient Chinese book. Its' function is forming a bibliographic record in standardized and concise words. This article focus on the description of Chinese classic including the origin and development of the description, the situation of the description in Mainland China, the collection, description and comparison of the Chinese classics abroad.Many monographs on bibliography were published during the Qin, Han, Wei Jin and Northern and Southern Dynasties, and the forms of narrative style, compiling style and biographic style were occurred. The establishment of the Four Divisions Classification System during Tang, Song and Yuan Dynasties, and the emergence of non-governmental bibliographies in large numbers laid the foundation of the development of bibliography in Ming and Qing period. As the bibliographies compiled by governments and individuals sprang up, the occurrence of Combined Bibliography of Si Ku Quan Shu reach the highest peak of the description of Chinese classics.The present situation of the description of Chinese classic includes traditional description with spaces, standard description with indications and the MARC of Chinese classic. It has the characters and trends of standardizing, simplifying and achievements sharing. Entry, mark and information source are the three main characters of the standard description of Chinese classic. Entry is the carrier of the bibliographic information. The recognizing, understanding and selection of the contend and style of a Chinese classic are the keys of description, which deserve thorough analysis and discussion.There are a lot of valuable Chinese classics distributed in many countries around the world, and the description and research of these books is developing, which is one of the important compositions of the research on the description of Chinese classics.The description of Chinese classic in Japan takes the leading place abroad, which creates its own style as well as successes the Chinese tradition. However, in Europe and America, Chinese experts are asked to catalogue these documents, the description style is similar to that in Mainland China. The project of digitizing of the description of Chinese classic is carrying out in Japan, at same time, American experts also try to catalogue in cooperation in a small scale. Resource sharing is at present, however, the inconsistent of the format of description may become the bottleneck of its developmentDeepening the description of Chinese classic, making the description more concise and systematic, developing the related function of the information of description as well as standardizing the description and sharing resource in the globe is the prospect of the development of the description of Chinese classics.