Dr. SHAO Dongfang / 邵東方博士

• Ph.D. in History, University of Hawai’i at Manoa

• MLIS, San Jose State University

• B.A., M.A., Beijing Normal University

Before coming to Stanford in 1999, Dongfang Shao was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chinese Studies at National University of Singapore. He then served as a Research Fellow in Asian Religions and Cultures Initiative at Stanford University, and spent one academic year as an Associate Professor in the Institute of History at Fo Guang University before returning to Stanford. He was Director of the East Asia Library at Stanford University, taking up this position in 2003. He was appointed by President John L. Hennessy as a member of Advisory Council of Stanford University Libraries in July 2012. He serves also as an honorary/adjunct professor at the following institutions: Beijing Normal University, Beijing Jiaotong University, and Xiangtan University.

His major research and teaching areas include Chinese intellectual history, Chinese historical literature, Classical Chinese, information and library science. He was appointed as Chief of Asian Division, Library of Congress in Washington, DC in April, 2012. In this capacity, he served as the Library of Congress as the primary expert in the provision of reference services related to material in all languages of Asia and the Pacific Islands, and had custodial responsibility for the largest Asian language collections outside of Asia. He retired from that position in the Fall of 2024.