Finds at work.

While searching for some books in our uncatalogued FCO material I just found 5 volumes of 1st editions of James Legge's translations of the Chinese classics. They made me very happy. Especially as the characters are so much nicer than in the Dover reprints. I also found an AMAZING book of 19th century Bushman folktales. They had the original language one one side and the English translation on the other. Complete with the names of the people who told the story, the date and who they heard it from. There were also pictures of them. It would be Such a fantastic resource to someone studying in that field. Lovely treasure of oral history and folklore. I'm liking my job again, though I am also glad that after today I'll only have 4 days left till the Christmas holiday! HORRAY!

Handbook to the collections of Sir Aurel Stein in the UK

This was mostly a reference book that really shouldn't be read cover to cover but I am so obsessed with Dunhuang and Aurel Stein that I actually did go through the whole thing. It was fascinating to see which museums, libraries and archives had material belonging to him and how it ended up there. It was a little insight into museum and library cataloguing as well as into the history of the man and his exhibitions. The most interesting thing I learned was that the British Museum has over 4000 Chinese coins from Han-Qing dynasties. There was also a lovely obituary, and a incredibly complete bibliography of all his works and all works about him. And of course mention of the International Dunhuang Project, possibly my favourite thing in the world. It is now available free online through the British Library and is a great resource.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/Stein%20Handbook%20final(131108)a.pdf