NACIRA conference Chair’s intro

Welcome to the 2022 conference of NACIRA, the National Committee for Information Resources on Asia.

Before we begin I would like to let you know that this conference is being recorded and the talks will be made available on YouTube afterwards. Please use the Q&A function to submit your questions during the presentations; we have allowed time at the end of each presentation for the speakers to respond.

NACIRA exists to advance the education of the public in library matters relating to Asia and North Africa. Part of that remit is to serve as a general forum for people working with research collections on Asian studies in the UK and further afield, seeking to promote and improve access to resources, and working with specialist groups that focus on region or language-specific knowledge domains such as the China Library Group and Middle East Libraries Group.

Each year we organise an AGM at which we invite each of these specialist groups to report on problems and developments in the sector, and we also hold a conference organised around a specific theme to which we invite speakers from a range of different institutions representing different Asian studies collections. Until the pandemic, these events were always held in person, but the last two conferences have been held online, like this one. Last year our conference had the salutary aim of reflecting on the experience of service and stewardship during the pandemic, but this year we wanted to do something quite different. This year’s conference is devoted to materials in UK research collections for the study of Asian plants and animals, and we have convened a wonderful panel of expert speakers from a diverse range of institutions covering the length and breadth of the UK. I’m very grateful to all of them for agreeing to participate in this conference. I should note that unfortunately Mark Watson from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh was forced to pull out of the conference at short notice, but I’m delighted that Henry Noltie stepped in at the last minute to speak about Indian collections at the RBGE. Henry is a much in-demand speaker and we’re extremely fortunate to have him with us today. I’d also like to thank our Secretary Chris Dillon for his sterling work organising the conference, to Eleanor Cooper for her assistance, and to Sara Chiesura for creating the beautiful conference flyer.

Plants and animals, or flora and fauna, are a subject of great and universal appeal to people of all ages and all cultures, and they are involved in all aspects of human activity, from agriculture and technology, to art and religion. At the individual level, they of course play an important role for many of us in daily life as domestic companions. At the other end of the spectrum, at a world-historical level, they have also helped shape the development of civilization in Asia, Europe, and everywhere else. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel, the geographer Jared Diamond famously attributed the development of Eurasian civilizations to the relative availability of wild plant and animal species that were suitable for domestication. These permitted the more complex development of agriculture and therefore of larger and wealthier societies. This benefit was amplified because domesticated species could be disseminated across the Eurasian continent which was distributed geographically along an east-west axis, where similar latitudes gave rise to relatively similar climates. According to this view, plants and animals therefore drove the entire trajectory of Asian and European civilizations. Right or wrong, it is undoubtedly the case that the spread of people, technology, and culture between Asia, Europe, and elsewhere has been a driving force for social and economic development from ancient to modern times; and this process is reflected in the cultural heritage which we look after in contemporary libraries, museums, archives, and other collections today.

Of course, the vast majority of plant and animal species have never been domesticated, and recent decades have seen increased attention to the urgent importance of conserving landscapes, habitats, and plant and animal species that are under threat or faced with extinction. Modern environmental awareness informs our appreciation of the pressing need for present and future conservation efforts, but it should also bring home the importance of understanding how people in the past related to their natural environments: not only the ways in which they sought to appreciate and manage it, but also how they sought to harness it in the service of economics and culture.

I hope you all enjoy today’s conference, and would like now to introduce our first speaker.