Virtual Cities Terms of use
Terms of use
The purpose of the Virtual Cities Project at the Lyons Institute of East Asian Studies (IAO) is to support and promote research and education on all aspects of the history of cities and urban societies in East Asia. Its functions are threefold:
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Collection and preservation—as original documents or digital files—of pertinent historical source material.
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Production of original and innovative research on urban history.
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Promotion of education through online exhibits and publications.
We place considerable importance on preserving records that document all aspects of urban life, past and present, in East Asia.
The Virtual Cities Project seeks to provide a forum for all perspectives and for all topics related to the urban experience in East Asian societies—particularly, though not exclusively, in China and Vietnam. The views expressed by authors are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Virtual Cities Project.
Copyright
All documents (texts, images, maps) are made available free of charge and without commercial purpose. The vast majority originate from sources scattered across the world and are presented here in a digital format not previously available. The Virtual Cities Project seeks to provide the academic community, students, and the general public with a rich body of literature on the history and urban experience of East Asia—primarily China and Vietnam—while respecting the copyright of authors.
We strongly encourage users to cite properly all documents obtained through the Virtual Cities Project, giving full credit to the original authors. High-resolution digital files of photographs or maps are not provided if they are not our property or are not in the public domain. We can provide materials to scholars for research purposes, but we do not supply photographs or maps for publication purposes—not as a matter of policy, but simply due to limited capacity to process such requests.
If the online publication of any document is found to violate the wishes of the author or their heirs, the Virtual Cities Project will remove the material upon written request to the project director of the relevant Virtual City.
Technical aspect
The files available through the Virtual Cities Project have been digitized from original documents or from reproductions of varying print quality and conservation status. They are provided “as is,” without guarantee as to the validity or completeness of the information they contain. In some textual records, optical character recognition (OCR) has been applied to allow full-text search.
Donating to the Virtual Cities Project
The Virtual Cities Project welcomes donations ranging from a single item to multiple boxes of materials. Donations do not need to be organized or associated with a specific person, event, or organization. We accept papers, books, films, audio recordings, moving images, and artifacts. Donations may be made to the Virtual Cities Project as a whole or to individual Virtual Cities. For more information, please consult our Information for Donors section.
Citation of VCP-produced documents
Unless otherwise noted, all documents (texts, images, maps) produced by scholars involved in the Virtual Cities Project are under Copyright © Virtual Cities Project (Institut de Recherches Asiatiques, Aix-Marseille University – CNRS). The “fair use” provisions of Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 apply.
Maps and photographic materials may be used for educational and other non-commercial purposes without written permission from the Virtual Cities Project. They may not be used for resale or commercial purposes without written authorization from the Virtual Cities Project.
All borrowed materials must be credited as follows: "Courtesy of the Virtual Shanghai Project (Institut de Recherches Asiatiques)".
Last update on Friday 15 August 2025 (16:54) by C. Henriot