The WCILCOS (World Confederation of Institutes and Libraries in Chinese Overseas Studies) is a federation established by participating institutes and libraries in a Chinese Overseas Studies conference in Athens, Ohio, 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. You-Bao Shao Overseas Chinese Documentation Center has served as its secretariat, and devoting its resources to the Confederation’s goals and visions.
For the past decade, the Shao Center has been co-organizing the international conferences with different host institutions in Hong Kong (2003), Singapore (2005) and Guangzhou, China (2009). They have been very successful in bringing librarians, institutes, and scholars in Chinese Overseas Studies together, not only in providing a platform for librarians to interact and exchange ideas with scholars and collectors, but also a platform for tackling issues in collection development, access, preservation, and information-sharing in the field of Chinese Overseas.