Korea Collection Basic Reference Tools: Basic Reference Tools

Please navigate the list of reference tools using the drop-down menu.

The reference tools included in this list are based mainly on ones held at the Korea Collection of the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), which now contains about 1,100 reference titles. It may not cover all the basic reference tools available. Suggestions for inclusion of other titles by the users of this list are expected to make it more useful.

Titles published before 1989 are excluded, since Eugene Hyung-suk Chai’s An Annotated Bibliography of Korean Reference Books covered them. Chai’s Bibliography is an excellent and very useful compilation of reference materials on Korea. I recommend that every Korea collection should have a copy. This “Basic Reference Tools on Korea” includs some serial titles, even though they are covered in Chai’s work, if they are still being published and belong to the ‘basic’ category.

References in this list are organized by the types of reference tools and/or by the disciplinary subjects. Under each type and subject, references are sometimes grouped together when they represent similar types or subject matter.

When there is no English title available for a reference written in Korean language, the title in Chinese characters in brackets is provided.

Travel Guidebooks are not included. They are easily identifiable (Fodor’s; the lonely planet travel survival kits, etc.). Many travel guides are also available on the web.

References without publication years are serial publications.

For a basic guide to citing sources, please click here.