Our Story

The Crown Jewels of Sinology in Taiwan

Concept behind the logo design of UDP:

The “blue sea” beneath signifies Taiwan’s characters as a maritime country — broad-minded, tolerant and flexible. At the top is our title (聯合百科) presented in the form of calligraphy, which symbolizes our mission to promote Chinese culture. Finally, the red pearl imbedded in “udp”, the abbreviation of our English title. It stands for our high-quality archives of Asian studies — “The Pearl of Sinology”.

The “pearl” also symbolizes a niche market that is small yet refined—a value UDP has long upheld through its commitment to scholarly depth and meticulous content selection. Founded in 1992 by humanistic publishers Fan Yang-Sung and Nancy Wuu, UDP set out with a clear mission: to build a Taiwan-based brand of high-quality humanities and social sciences databases. Innovation in both content and technology has always been at the core of our vision. Since 2023, pioneering features such as AI-powered image search, colorization, and multilingual retrieval have broken new ground in the Chinese-language digital humanities landscape, greatly expanding the horizons of academic research. To date, UDP has processed over 4.5 billion characters of data and serves more than 1,200 libraries across 33 countries on four continents, with strategic partners in 10 countries across Europe, North America, and the Asia-Pacific. Our content selection has grown from a Taiwan-centered perspective to include the Chinese-speaking world, Asian studies, and now global issues of interest to scholars worldwide.

● In 2009, UDP collaborated with Academia Sinica to build up the sole Full-text and Full-image databases for “Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philosophy” and “Chinese Studies” (Taiwan National Central Library) — which is a huge breakthrough to digitize the rare pictograms on Chinese ancient manuscripts.

● In 2011, UDP awarded two vital subsidies from Taiwanese government because of the technological achievements on their innovative services: “Sinica Sinoweb” and “Lionart Digital Archive”.

● In 2015-2018, “Zhuanji Wenxue Digital Archive” and “Taiwan Journals Search” launched. The former documents the history of modern China since 1962 to date, while the latter compiles 310+ top academic journals in Taiwan.

● In 2019, UDP attained authorization for the National Palace Museum Journals, evolving our database into the “Taiwan Academic Classics’ (TAC) platform with over 3.3 billion characters. Awarded a subsidy by the ‘Taipei City Industrial Development Bureau’ in 2020, the platform was revitalized in 2021, employing advanced Elasticsearch technology and a modern Sinology interface, providing a refreshing journey through Sinological elegance. The “National Palace Museum Journal Archive”, along with the “Sinica Sinoweb” from Academia Sinica, stand as the Twin Jewels of Taiwanese Sinology, symbolizing UDP’s representative works .

● Since 2023, staying true to our commitment to continuous innovation in both content and technology, the platform has pioneered groundbreaking features in Chinese-language databases—such as AI-powered image search, colorization, and multilingual translation-based retrieval. These tools create a hyperlinked experience that transcends time and space, disciplines, cultures, and languages, opening unexpected possibilities and hybrid research perspectives that bridge East and West.