Harvard–Yenching Library, East Asian research library in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Harvard-Yenching Library is a research library in Cambridge, Massachusetts, focused on East Asian languages, literatures, and history. The collection is one of the largest of its kind outside Asia and spans printed books, manuscripts, and digital materials across many languages.

The library was founded in 1928 as the Chinese-Japanese Library of the Harvard-Yenching Institute and moved to its current building on Divinity Avenue in 1958. Since then it has grown steadily into one of the leading centers for East Asian research outside the region.

The library holds texts in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Tibetan, Manchu, and Mongolian, which gives a sense of how wide East Asian written traditions really are. Walking through the stacks, you can see how scholars from many different language backgrounds use the same reading room side by side.

Access to the collections is mainly intended for researchers and registered users, so it is worth checking access conditions before your visit. Orientation sessions offered each semester can help first-time visitors find their way around the electronic resources and databases.

The Ming-Qing Women's Writings collection gathers records of women's lives and writings in China from the 14th through the 20th century, a body of material that is rarely found in Western institutions. Many of these texts were written by women who recorded their own experiences at a time when such voices were seldom preserved.

• Location: Massachusetts
• Inception: 1928
• Part of: Harvard Library
• Address: 2 Divinity Ave. Cambridge MA 02138
• Website: https://library.harvard.edu/libraries/yenching
• GPS coordinates: 42.37750,-71.11430
• Latest update: March 3, 2026 08:15