Chinese Canadian Library Weblog

Ms. Xiao showed us the user survey, 3,000 responses, about 10% of Peking U. The libraries’ circulation is over 1 million per year, and doubled online downloads. ILL has 7 FTEs and 40,000 items. Chinese students ARE reading books! CALIS, CASHL, NSTL and NLC are the 4 large document delivery networks. Chengzhi’s question on large libraries’ suprise about how much materials they are getting from others is interesting and deserves a research project. Mr. Ma mentioned Harvard Yenching’s increasing demands and revennue brought to the library. My question is whether or not those money can be added to the collection budget. Xiao Long sounds like the flexible one-on-one ILL better than large systems.

Users training or instruction have expanded into departments and schools. Profs don’t want to accommodate library’s schedule and facilities. They also invite vendors for demos and user instruction, and put all the courseware online, which are including AV. Librarians are involved in multimedia courseware design. The Chinese citation management software NoteExpress is much cheaper than RefWorks and can handle all languages.

Peking U developed quite alot databases such as 学苑汲古 and 北京历史地理数据库. They gave their metadata to Baidu, not Google, due to nationalism. Wonder if China has a national policy for its information resource sharing and access and national protection.

Digital library portals are growing fast, general ones by each academic libraries, or specialized such as classical Chinese, etc. OAI allows 资源调度, with its behind the scene system. Diana reported first about U Wisconsin’s China Initiative. The president visited China many times a year? Great! How to make other branches buy China related e-resources? The demands from Science and Law faculty are tricky and need collaborative effort, the UL has to arbitrate among branches. Extensive research and attention are on Tibet, Shan, Gan, Ning. Xiao encourages us to use OA resources from China and work with Chinese librarians.

Shuwen talks about the Chinese Rarebook Project, which is not covered by Google Books. I don’t think it’s zero cost, for we need to scan and link the 856 field. Feel guilty to Soren, for I haven’t found time to do it yet. Wondering if Shuwen means that the Project can have our records done. But how useful it is jus to add the title page of rarebooks while most of libraries are about to digitize the entire books.

Mr. Ye Ding has very clear mind and only talked about 2 aspects, one on resources that we have learnt from the previous sessions and CALIS; another one is cooperation, such as virtual reference.

Ms. Xiao expressed her opinion towards us cheefully and thinks we are a bunch of real professionals! She encourages us to spend time in her libraries and work more closely. I would like to setup an exchange program with her, so I can go to Beida, and her staff can spend a few months work in my position for UBC.

Allyson said LCSH might be the reason of auto-classification’s delay. LC Working Group recommends to increase the efficiency of bib. production for all libraries; incorporation of non-library data into cataloguing data; development of internationally shared authority files; and suspend work on RDA!

Can Worldcat Local (WLC) include circulation data? then is it going to replace local ILS? Why do we need WLC? if we can open each others’ ILS?

Ann Lally thinks collaboration is the key for UW digital projects. They not only have centralized projects, but also branch ones and even external ones. Then Mr. Theo Gerontakos told us about his group’s work to identify metadata and coordinate consistent application, which led to a Data Dictionary.