On 19 February, Chen Ying, Secretary of the CPC Committee of the National Library of China (NLC) and Deputy Director of the NLC, met with Yang Jidong, Director of the Harvard-Yenching Library, and accepted digital resources of Chinese rare books and ancient books donated by the Harvard-Yenching Library on behalf of the NLC. Zhang Zhiqing, former Executive Deputy Director of the NLC, Zhang Jun, Deputy Director of the NLC, Zheng Jiongwen, former Director of the Harvard-Yenching Library, Zhou Yuan, former Director of the East Asia Library at the University of Chicago, and so on, attended the event.

Chen Ying welcomed Yang Jidong and his delegation and expressed gratitude for the donation of the Harvard-Yenching Library. She reviewed the cooperation between the two libraries over the years in the digitization, compilation and publication of Chinese rare books and ancient books, as well as the cooperative development and sharing of Chinese resources. She expressed her willingness to continue deepening exchanges and expanding cooperation with the Harvard-Yenching Library.

Yang Jidong stated that the digital resource cooperation project carried out by both parties marked the beginning of the digitalization work of Harvard-Yenching Library and had significant importance. This donation would help promote the dissemination and utilization of these precious resources. He hoped that the Harvard-Yenching Library would continue to maintain close exchanges with the NLC in the future and strengthen cooperation in the in-depth development and intelligent construction of ancient book resources.

The Harvard-Yenching Library is the East Asian Studies Library of Harvard University, with a collection of approximately 1.5 million books, including more than 3800 rare ancient books and over 18000 ordinary ancient books. The content of this donation includes digital resources of precious ancient book such as Chinese rare books, local chronicles, and book series, further enriching the NLC's collection of digital resources of Chinese rare books and ancient book.