Chinese Canadian Library Weblog

The first week of the Summer Institute ended with a tour of the libraries where we came for classes everyday. I didn’t really like this building when I was a library school student. Whenever I walked in, I felt like going into a cathedral where I was supposed to pray not study. Whenever I walked […]

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 […]

Ms. Xiao Long is talking about integration of Chinese digital resources, 中文电子资源整合。She showed us Peking U library’s Subject Gateway which leads to different databases according to a rough Chinese classification, and can be searched by names as well. E-books and dissertations have both marc and metadata, they are converted and linked. The 2002 national standard […]

肖珑接着讲评估。 Xiao continued her talk on assessment. She mentioned CNKI’s embargo issue, which cleared my mind about Dushu, whose 2008 issues are already in, but not the late 2007 ones. She used 中国图书馆学报 as a sample, which has already completely stopped with CNKI?! We have no clue. It’s really annoying for CNKI’s lack of transparency! […]

Xiao Long, AUL of Peking U, gave a practical and open lecture in the morning on e-resources and their usage at academic libraries in China. I found it very useful and will go through those that we don’t have, such as 新华在线、时代圣典, etc. My group is more interested in the comparison among the same type […]

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 […]

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 […]

Both Saturday and Sunday sessions are sponsored by TTOD, so have to be on their new product. The ambitious strategy of mounting all e-resources on their platform shocked me, and I think it’s desgined to target the Chinese market. Our users may not want to depend on it for their individual digital libraries, no need […]

Woke up at 6 am and jogged around the campus. Zhijia and Michael started working already at OUGL. Dressed up and walked into the library, Chen Chuanfu greeted me right away and called me “Xiao You” from WHU and UW. Got to treat him for dinner just for that. Betsy still looks pretty and elegant. […]

Driving with Bie-Hwa down to Seattle took no time. We had so much to talk about, no stop! parents, kids, cultural difference, career paths…After we grabbed free coffee in Skagit Valley, and had a quick chat with the coffee ladies on Mariners’ game, we were back into the heavy traffic and got excited talking about […]