Jorge Álvares Foundation Library
The Jorge Álvares Foundation Library of the Centre is a library specialized in research and teaching on China/Macau, East Asia and Europa-Asia relations. It is aimed at Higher Education audiences, students and professors from universities and polytechnic institutes, national and foreign researchers, as well as anyone interested in information and training on China, Macau and East Asia. The Library is the most complete and up-to-date library on China in the entire Lusophone world. With an international and multidisciplinary dimension, it works in network with other libraries and archives, national and foreign, in order to better fulfill its mission of supporting research, teaching, information and dissemination of knowledge. The main areas covered are history, art, culture, science and technology, philosophy, religion and socio-political systems. The Library’s valuable documentary fund, which includes the most complete documentary collection on Macau and China, in particular Ming and Qing China, consists of documents in the most different languages (Portuguese, English, French, Italian, Chinese and Japanese) and is available in an online catalog.
The approximately 27.000 bibliographic records currently in catalog are divided into several collections, of which we highlight:
- the collection for consultation and loan, consisting of the most recently published works (from 1960 to the present), integrated by acquisition and donation, and organized in a systema of free access for subjects, according to the classification of the Library of the Congress;
- the collection of reserved items, consisting of nuclei of donated documents which, for their value, are kept in a special deposit, namely the documents donated by Monsignor Manuel Teixeira;
- the audiovisual collection, which includes about 40.000 slides and 5.000 photographs, among other physical supports;
- the microfilm collection, an extremely rich colleciton consisting of about 7.000 microfilms containing more than 50.000 documents, including the fund from the Holy House of Mercy of Macau, reserved books from the Historical Archive of Macau, the Parish Archives of Macau and the Archive of the Municipal Council of Macau, among other collections. This collection is mainly composed of essential documents for the study of Macau and its institutions, covering a time range from the beginning of the 17th century to the mid-20th.
