Lisa Chang-Cheng Woo, East Asian Library faculty librarian in the 1980s and 1990s – who was praised by Pitt’s China Council and Japan Council as a bibliographer of “exemplary” effort, “skill, energy and devotion”— died on Nov. 19, 2025, at 96.
In those decades, she developed the Chinese collection of the East Asian Library, providing “excellent support for faculty, staff and graduate students who regularly use Chinese- and Japanese-language materials,” the council leaders wrote jointly about her. “She closely monitors the research interests of our China studies community and uses her knowledge of ongoing research to guide the work of collection development,” aiding faculty with research queries while she “participates regularly in the intellectual life of our China studies community.
“She not only attends lectures and seminars, but also has compiled a substantial list of scholarly publications that reflect her own intellectual development and commitment to the field of China studies,” they added.
Born Lisa Chang-Cheng Jen on Oct. 15, 1929, in Changsha, Hunan, China, Woo earned her BA (1952) and MA (1956) in history at the National Taiwan University on a China-U.S. Foundation scholarship. She completed her master of library science degree from Pitt’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science in 1973, after which she joined the University as a bibliographer for Asian Studies in June 1974, becoming Chinese bibliographer/cataloger in 1981.
She served the University Library System on nearly a dozen committees over the years and published scholarly articles on Chinese history and library science. She also conducted professional seminars at libraries in Shanghai, Xian and Hunan and was editor of the Digest of Chinese Studies for the American Association for Chinese Studies beginning in 1989, chairing a panel at its annual meeting in 1990. She retired in 1994.
In writing to Woo’s supervisor, Thomas C. Kuo, curator of East Asian Library, another Pitt colleague, Cho-yun Hsú, praised Woo’s “valuable services in checking the sources in Chinese works,” and in meeting Hsú at the Library of Congress of Library, where she “demonstrated solid knowledge of rare-book editions of Chinese books … Her works testify convincingly that Lisa has made herself a record of professional excellence.”
Lisa Woo is survived by her daughter, Rhoda, and her children Alex and Lucy, and by her son Andy’s widow Gina and their children Miles and Julian. Also surviving are her nephews and nieces and their families: Maria Chu; Y.T. Chu and I-Ping Chu; Xiao Nian Jen, Xiao Hwei Jen, Xiao Ling Jen and Yung An Jen; Yung Ming Jen; Bai-Bai Chen Goldberg; Ching-ching Chen, Ming-ming Chen and Chu-chu Chen.
She was predeceased by her husband Tse-Chien (“TC”) Woo, professor emeritus in mechanical engineering in the Swanson School of Engineering, in 2016, whose obituary is here.
— Marty Levine