Introduction

National Library of Vietnam - Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation

The National Library of Vietnam (NLV) in Hanoi holds a special collection of some 4000 ancient texts in Hán and Nôm, the former ideographic writing systems of Vietnam.  Since 2006, the NLV has co-operated with The Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation (VNPF) to preserve this important cultural heritage through the creation of a digital library.  What you see in the images and metadata on this website are the first steps for creating a digital library for scholarly research, teaching, and learning in Vietnam and abroad.  The goal of this joint project is to create a user-friendly digital library of the entire Hán-Nôm collection at the National Library, using current techniques in digital capture, library science, and information technology.  This is the first such digital library of ancient texts in Vietnam. Many of these texts have not been previously presented to the world because of their fragile condition.