LoGaRT: Local Gazetteers Research Tools

INSTITUTION

Max Planck Institute, Harvard-Yenching Library

ACCESS

open access

URL

https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/research/projects/logart-local-gazetteers-research-tools

DESCRIPTION

LoGaRT (Local Gazetteers Research Tools) is innovative software developed by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in collaboration with Harvard-Yenching Library for searching, analyzing, and collecting data from digitized Chinese local gazetteers (difangzhi 地方志). Rather than requiring scholars to browse individual gazetteers, LoGaRT treats all available digitized gazetteers as a unified conceptual database, providing a bird's-eye view across the entire corpus. This approach enables historians to ask large-scale comparative questions transcending geographical regions, time periods, and individual research projects. The platform currently provides access to two high-quality collections: Rare Local Gazetteers at Harvard-Yenching Library and Erudition's Zhongguo fangzhi ku (中国方志库). LoGaRT's analytical capabilities allow researchers to identify patterns, track changes over time, compare regional variations, and extract structured data from these rich historical sources. The tool represents a significant advance in making local gazetteer research more systematic, scalable, and collaborative, opening new possibilities for quantitative and comparative studies of Chinese local history, society, economy, and culture.

SOURCE LIST

ACLS Open Database Resource Guide

LAST MODIFIED

2026-01-16