The Eide Research Library is a leading resource for Chinese studies in the Southeastern United States. Its benefactor Elling O. Eide (1935-2012), was a passionate bibliophile who graduated summa cm laude from Harvard University with a degree in East Asian Languages and Civilizations. He continued to build his research collection while a graduate student and teaching fellow at Harvard, an assistant professor of Chinese literature at the University of Illinois, and after he returned to Sarasota, Florida to care for his aging parents. The library’s present holdings of over 75,000 volumes result from six decades of acquisitions that Mr. Eide personally selected. Through continued procurement of new materials and additions to enhance the collection, The Elling Eide Center is committed to maintaining the library’s areas of special strength and its usefulness as a research center. Beginning in 2015, subscriptions to online books and journals have been added. The library contains the basic sinological reference works typical of a medium-sized university collection and holds scholarly publications concerning every period of Chinese history from ancient times to the modern era. It is believed to be one of the largest private collections of East Asian literature in the United States. Special strengths of the collection reflect the benefactor’s fields of research—the history and literature of medieval China (fourth through tenth centuries), the premodern peoples and languages of Central and Inner Asia, and the poetry of the Tang dynasty, with particular focus on the eighth-century author Li Bai. The holdings are in Chinese, English, Japanese, German, and French, among other languages. The center will provide researchers, scholars and students the opportunity to explore Chinese culture, history and art on a natural wildlife preserve. In addition, it will host conferences, special lectures and tours by appointment only.
