Jee-Young Park

Library Profile

Jee-Young Park is responsible for developing and maintaining the Korean Studies collection and she provides reference services to support the teaching and research needs of the faculty and students at the University of Chicago. Additionally, Jee-Young serves as the Korean studies liaison between the Center for East Asian Studies and the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. She is also a member of the Committee on Korean Studies / the Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL).

Jee-Young is a graduate of the San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science and the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Japanese Language and Culture. Prior to joining the University of Chicago Library, Jee-Young was a Korean cataloging librarian at the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University.

Library Projects

Korean International Students at the University of Chicago

The current project locates and traces the history of Korean international students at the University of Chicago. The University has long made efforts to enable the intellectual growth of individuals from different parts of the world, and in the 1910-1920s, it welcomed its first group of Korean international students, including Kwang Sup Yum (Divinity). Since then, the Korean international student population has steadily grown, with an increasing number of students advancing their studies and engaging with the Korean community in Chicagoland before moving on to occupations in their respective fields. The project will be showcased during a joint exhibit by the Library and the Korea Foundation Advanced Studies (KFAS), a scholarship foundation subsidized by SK Group, to be held in the Special Collections Gallery in Fall 2024.

The Bibliography of East Asian Periodicals (Colonial Korea 1900-1945)

This is the culmination of a two-year collaborative project led by a team of East Asian subject area specialists and Korean Studies scholars. The project team identified and compiled comprehensive information on a total of 913 periodicals from the period of Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945), the pre-colonial period (1896-1910), and the post-colonial period (1945-1948). Through data compilation, organization, and research, the bibliography outlines each journal’s identifying information, including region of origin, bibliographic details of publication, regions of distribution, and current accessibility status. Additionally, through textual interpretation, the bibliography provides commentary on the symbolic meaning of these texts. The project won the Provost’s Global Faculty Award for FY22.

North Korean Stamp Collection Digitization Project

2,000 North Korean stamps acquired from China and Germany in 2019 were digitized and supplemented with a wide range of in-depth data to form the North Korean Stamp Collection. Compiled from 19 stamp books and 30 individual sheets, this digital collection spans more than five decades, from 1962 to 2017, and covers a variety of subject areas. The processes of digitization, in-depth meta-development, and Luna database collection management were all completed in cooperation with the Visual Resources Center (VRC).

In-depth metadata development for Postcard Image Collection of Colonial Korea

(UChicago affiliates only)

Expanding the role of the Korean Studies collection from traditional library acquisitions, this project executed meta-development with other peer institutions and archival digitization in cooperation with other University departments. The Korean publisher Minsokwon provided us with over 8,000 raw images accompanied by basic Korean-only meta-information. Korean Studies Librarians at 7 different academic institutions developed Korean Romanization and English keyword search terms. The Library and Visual Resources Center (VRC) cooperated to upload the images with their corresponding meta-information to the online archival system LUNA.

Web Exhibits

Understanding North Korea Korea Through Stamps (2020)

The Jeju 4.3 Uprising and its Reconciliation (2018)

(Co)-Humanitarian (2017)

20 Years and After: Korean Collections Consortium of North America (2016)