Taiwan's National Central Library has donated nearly 400 books to the C.V. Starr East Asian Library of Columbia University in the United States, according to a statement released by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in New York Friday. The donation was made at the Columbia library Friday and was witnessed by over 50 teachers and students from the university's Weatherhead East Asian Institute, including the institute's director, Myron Cohen, Friday afternoon eastern time. Damon Jaggers, associate university librarian for collections and services at Columbia University, was also in attendance. The East Asian Library's acting-director, Ria Koopmans-de Bruijn, said that the university has maintained friendly relations with the Republic of China and that aside from its exchanges with the National Central Library, its has also exchanged books and documents preserved on microfilm with Taiwan's Academia Sinica. New York TECO Director-General Andrew Kao said he believes the books will help scholars and students in the university gain knowledge of Taiwan and its main issues and promote the visibility of Taiwanese authors. Cohen said that with his institute set to offer courses on Taiwan studies next semester, Friday's book donations will prove useful. The institute, he said, will also hold a seminar, titled 'Taiwan in the 21st Century,' in Taiwan on June 13. The over-100-year-old C.V. Starr East Asian Library has one of the biggest collections of books from East Asia of any U.S. library. It has nearly 870,000 volumes in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Tibetan. 