Dear Colleagues Through cooperation between the Institute of History and Philology at Academia Sinica, the Research Center for Digital Humanities at National Taiwan University, and the China Biographical Database <http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k16229> (CBDB) a new digital edition of the Song huiyao 宋會要輯稿 will shortly become accessible for research purposes. The system, which has many more functionalities than the usual text search, currently allows one to sort the Song huiyao by person, co-occurring persons, place, office, and time. More functionalities will be added, including an ability to map online. A powerpoint introduction to the system will appear soon. The purpose in making this system available to subscribers to the Journal of Song Yuan Studies scholars (free of all license fees) is to secure your help in verifying that the computational procedures have correctly identified person names that appear in the text. Data relating to persons will eventually be extracted and included in the CBDB. In return for your help you will have full access to the text. At this writing the exact procedure for soliciting your help has yet to be decided, but we except it to be simple and short. A login name and password will be necessary to access the system. CBDB will manage passwords for those subscribers to the Journal of Song Yuan Studies who wish to participate. You can apply now by filling in all fields in a form at the following URL https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGw2MjdRNnNfWWZaTk5sUzFJOGZHZVE6MQ. Your email address will be your login name. A password will be sent to you in the coming weeks. Inquiries (not registration) can be directed to the CBDB Program Manager, Dr. Chen Shih-pei 陳詩沛 at shihpeichen@fas.harvard.edu. Best wishes Peter Bol pkbol@fas.harvard.edu 20120201