Hilde De Weerdt, Professor of Chinese History at Leiden University, reviews recent efforts to connect text databases, biographical databases, geographic information systems, and tools generated from within the humanities community. She argues that connecting databases and tools, open access as well as commercial, is an important mission for researchers and librarians in Chinese Studies and one that has been ignored for too long.

De Weerdt says,
"In the first part of the presentation I will briefly discuss the limitations of well-known textual databases in pre-twentieth century and modern Chinese Studies with regard to search functionality, data discovery, exportability, and accessibility. Next I will demonstrate how customized humanities tools can help overcome many of these limitations, using as an example the basic and new functionality of the MARKUS platform. I will conclude that the generation of humanities-specific platforms and tools is necessary for the development of Chinese Studies and compatible with the goals and premises of philological inquiry. I will also emphasize that the realization of resources and tools that conform with academic standards and research flows requires far more engagement from within the Chinese Studies community and closer collaboration between librarians, computer scientists, and humanities researchers and teachers."