1999

East Asian Academic Librarians of California

Annual meeting, September 10, 1999

UC Riverside

The meeting was called to order at 10:10 a.m.

1. Opening Speech

Jim Thomson, University Librarian of UC Riverside, opened the meeting with welcome remarks to the group and comments on anticipated construction activities and budget constraints at Riverside libraries in the coming year.

2. Reports of Member Libraries

Berkeley (reported by Jean Han) – Tom Haven, director of the East Asian Library, has resigned. Professor David Keightley is appointed the interim director effective September 1. Mer. Y. K. Choo, Korean librarian, has been on 49% recall after his retirement.

In acquisitions, the library has been trying to acquire all Siku publications; in public services, an auto circulation system has been installed; in cataloging, efforts have been concentrated on retro-conversion. It is expected that 90% of the collections will be made online in 2 years.

Center for Chinese Studies (reported by Annie Chang) – In addition to “Wenshi Ziliao” and gazetteers, the Center has been collecting VCD for popular culture and Chinese Communists Party histories. Articles in the latter can be photocopied for ILL purposes. A professor in political science will be the interim director of the Center.

Claremont Colleges (reported by Isamu Miuar) – the retro-conversion of 16,000 Chinese titles was the highlight of last year’s activities. This year, retro-conversion will be focused on Korean titles.

Davis (reported by Phyllis Wang) – a 30% increase was received last year in Chinese and Japanese book budget which was used to reinstate some journals cancelled during previous years. Efforts have been made to augment general library collections with Japanese material in the areas of ethnology and the Japanese America internment experience during World War II.

Irvine (reported by Bill Wong) – a major acquisition was made of 2000 titles in the studies of “Yinjing”, 50% of which are rare materials and will be housed in Special Collections. Abraham Yu is doing the cataloging of this collection with the help from UCLA. East Asian collections at Irvine are focused on language and literature to support teaching programs on the campus.

Los Angeles (reported by Amy Tsiang) – there has been some turn-over in library personnel including the resignation of Mihoko Miki, Japanese librarian. Complete reorganization is also underway including the elimination of the Special Project section and the establishing of a new Public Services division. The Orion II library system is being treated.

Hoover Institution (reported by Julia Tung) – the digitization technology has greatly impacted the thinking and services at Stanford libraries, although the East Asian library will probably survive recent organization changes. In recent years, Hoover has also evolved from being a library for “modern China” to a repository that holds valuable materials on classical China. Lists on yearbooks, the Cultural Revolution and recent Taiwan opinion polls held at Hoover were passed out to the attendees.

Rvierside (reported by Kuei Chiu) – not much change in the past year. A new faculty will be teaching Japanese science fiction next year.

San Diego (reported by Cathy Chiu) - some campus collection special subject areas were called to attention, i.e. kabuki artists, local history of Tosa, Manchuria studies, Taiwanese literature. The library, in cooperation with the academic department, is building a database on Taiwanese literature.

University of Southern California (reported by Ken Klein) – the East Asian library which opened its door last year received a donation of 8000 volumes of Chinese books from professor Chou Ju-chang of the University of Wisconsin. It has also received a grant from the State of California to support digitization of some Korean America archive materials. In cooperation with the Korean American Museum in Los Angeles, it is building a Korean American archives.

3. UC Participation in NCC

Hideyuki Morimoto led a discussion on whether EAALC should align itself with NCC on Japanese studies library-related activities. Due to recent personnel changes, NCC has not been able to carry out its missions. Yuki Ishimatsu and Karl Lo were of the opinions that we should support NCC and maybe even help to push for certain projects. It was decided that Ishimatsu will draft two letters, on directed to LC to urge priority conversion of Japanese bibliographic and holdings records for entry in the LC new ILS system, one directed to Stanford University to urge submission compliance of its holdings for the union list of Japanese serials. The finalized letters can be sent out under the name of the Collection Development Council of the UC system.

4. Pinyin Conversion

Cathy Chiu gave a report on discussions within the UC system on the Pinyin conversion which will take place in year 2000. The UC task force on Pinyin feels that we do not have enough information in regard to LC specifications and plans. Members of the task force will be collecting information from LC, the Australian National Library, Innovac, and OCLC. Karl reported on the Australian conversion experience which he participated in part. He is of the opinion that the UC conversion will not be as simple as LC first envisioned and the total ramification of this conversion is beyond anyone’s prediction. Conversion of Chinese records in Melvyl for the entire UC system is not feasible at present due to the fact that Melvyl is too old to take on new projects. Although UC is looking for a new system to replace, the new system will not in place to solve our immediate problems.

5. Presentations

Policies and procedures concerning the process and use of manuscripts collections (Lillian Yang)

Resources for the Study of Contemporary East Asian Authors (William Wong with Naomi Findley, Mikyung Kang and Phyllis Want.)

East Asian digital libraries:

East Asian Digtal Library Globe report (Karl Lo).

Siku Quanshu demo (Karl Lo).

National Institute of Japanese Literature, Digital collection demo (Shoichiro Hara).

National Library of China, Digital collection demo (Chao Shi).

Agenda building for EADLG: What to do and what to acquire? (Karl Lo).

Meeting adjourned at 4:30pm.