Month: May 2008

Japanese Collections » Blogging at East Asian library collections Says:
March 13, 2008 at 2:19 am

“Chinese Canadian Library Weblog 加华图书馆博客… It has some good information about meetings and discussion of issues related to East Asian library services. In contrast to the other two that I found earlier, that are both “institutional blogs,” this one is more typical of the “blogosphere” — jottings, notes, etc — from librarians who are thinking about very interesting aspects of Chinese studies librarianship! Postings at the site are by Jing and Lingbo.”

Simon Winchester, the author of “The Man Who Loved China” published a piece in New York Times on May 15th. He compared Li Bing’s 2,300-year-old project, which still stands and works with the ruined school, less than a mile from Dujiangyan. On TV, we can see some buildings near those ruined schools are still standing. What a shame to have so many students buried under their own schools! The author popped the question that is much bigger than the earthquake.
Many proud Chinese readers may criticize the author, just like the way they sue CNN, but I do agree with him that “China, in its headlong attempts to modernize, has often demonstrated a dismayingly cavalier attitude toward the well-being of its people”. I experienced something similar last summer in Yunnan. Safety is not the major concern for those image projects.

Primary Research Group has published Library Use of E-books, 2008-09 Edition, (isbn 1-57440-101-7) and some of the results are:
Some of the report’s findings are that:

Libraries in the sample expected to renew over 77% of their current contracts.

Well over 81% of the sample cataloged their e-book collection and listed it in their online library catalog.

The libraries in the sample had MARC records for a mean of approximately 74% of the e-books in their collections.

Nearly 21% of the libraries in our sample have digitized out-of- copyright books in their collections in order to make their contents more available to their patrons.

Nearly 70% of the sample’s total spending on e-books was with aggregators, while just over 24.6% of the total spending was spent with individual publishers.