The WCILCOS(World Confederation of Institutes and Libraries for Overseas Chinese Studies) is a federation established by participating institutes and libraries in a Chinese Overseas Studies conference in Ohio University in 2000, to facilitate co-operation between scholarship and documentation, and between institutes, libraries, and archives in different parts of the world. Registered in Ohio, it is non-profit and non-political. No membership dues are collected. Since the inception of WCILCOS in 2000, the Dr. Shao You-Bao Overseas Chinese Documentation and Research Center has served as its secretariat, and devoting its resources to the Confederation’s goals and visions.

After the first WCILCOS conference in Athens, Ohio, the Shao Center has been co-organizing the international conferences with different host institutions in Hong Kong (2003), Singapore (2005) , Guangzhou, China (2009) and Vancouver (2012). These conferences have been very successful in bringing librarians to interact and exchange ideas with scholars and collectors, but also a platform for tacking issues in collection development, access, preservation, and information-sharing in the field of Chinese Overseas studies.

Please check the Constitution of the WCILCOS below for more details.