The East Asian Collection was developed from the "Gardner Collection," a special collection of approx. 30,000 volumes of Chinese books donated by the noted Harvard Sinologist, Charles Sidney Gardner in the 1960s. As of June 30, 2023, the Collection holds 162,961 volumes in Chinese, 30,628 volumes in Japanese, and 10,047 volumes in Korean, in addition to a large number of print serials, electronic resources and other formats. The total C-J-K book holdings are 203,636 volumes in East Asian languages, plus a good number of Western language materials on East Asian studies. Brown's East Asian Collection has been noted as one the most distinguished mid-sized East Asian collections in North America