Day: July 22, 2008

Zhou noticed the change on the other side of the Pacific. Great financial and technical improvement occurred in Chinese libraries, and they have made commitment to cooperate with us. Besides keeping up with the commercial e-resources, working with our counterparts in China will bring us more opportunities and make us stronger. He encouraged us to meet the demands from the emerging users, instead of holding onto the traditional collection development policy.

Jim’ session had a very fast pace and covered a lot of aspects around Google Books. Microsoft and OCA don’t have CJK books yet? OCA just started actually. Harvard has done their books (pre-1909) with Google, what about classics or rare? guess not. UCSD fed Google with their contemporary collection. This should be taken into account for our acquisition. It’s fascinating to see the MPI in their OPAC. ArtStore seems more useful than Prof. Chen’s Global Memeory to us. Browsed Jim’s film bibliography book within Google Book, too bad, not really full-text.

The weekend symposium ended with a cruise on Lake Washington, through the Lock and to the Pudget Sound. It’s a good bounding time, even with CNKI and Eastview folks. I like them personally, especially the two ladies. They couldn’t believe my translation when we past Bill and Melinda’s house, which used most of the recycled local woods, and the low-profile look (46,000 square feet though). I also enjoyed the conversation with Phil, Dr. Lee and the baby librarian, Chen Xi.

The official opening started at 8 am Monday morning. Betsy was right, there’s no better place than UW for this Institute. Look at the 5 speakers, elegant, warm, charming and cheerful, they left me life-long impression. Just a few quick notes below:Harry Bruce, the most handsome iSchool dean, gave us a warm welcome speech, which focused on his own connection with the international colleagues, and how lucky we all are to spend this July in Seattle.

Dean Yang told us about the interesting figure, Gowen, who started Chinese studies at UW, and called himself “the teacher of Sun Yet-Sam. He quoted our Canadian author, Spider Robinson “Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control information. Never piss one off.”

Peg Walther, the Information Resources Officer at the Beijing Embassy, graduated from both Jackson and the Ischool gave a nice speech, encouraging us to work librarians in China.

Phil reminded us the institute 20 years ago. Bless his heart, he went back to his notes that well connected that institute with the current one. He emphasized the organizational structure change brought by the e-resources, which is the case at UBC, but may not be that obvious at UW East Asian Library. Most of us have some growing pain.