Month: November 2008

Monday morning, we were greeted by Mr. Ke and Mr. An at the main entrance of Tsing Hua U. Ms. Zhou Mengzhi, who is in charge of the legal department, presented the organizational chart of TTOD, the digital publishing platform of CNKI and its overseas market share. Among all types of institutional users, over 2,000 hospital libraries made up the largest group. CAJ and CJP are TTOD’s major products so far followed by e-yearbooks. CNKI is one of the branches of American Tongfang with staff of 1,600. Mr. Ke reported that they have been working on the following areas after we met in July at the Summer Institute: Born digital resources, such as dissertations and conference proceedings; Integration of different formats; Value added services, such as authority control and tracking title changes, etc.Then Mr. Dong Fei presented the Yearbook Database followed by the reference book database demo by Ms. Li Xiaohong. All presenters emphasized on the cross-database searching, but our group members worried how much we could afford, when such an integrated and large-scaled digital product is presented to our users who may request for the full-text that our library is not capable to subscribe to. I also worry the overlap among different e-content providers.

We started the afternoon meeting with Dr. Zhang Xiaolin at 2pm in the National Library of Science, which serves the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). CAS has 103 research institutes in 28 cities with 25,000 staff and 3,5000 graduate students. Dr. Zhang asked us to promote the plan of hiring 100 librarians worldwide and sending his staff to work at North American academic libraries. Their services impressed the group especially the cross-domain search system, real-time virtual reference and desktop infor-tools （e划通）, which is a desktop retrieval tool that allows to search the third party’s or commercial databases from personal documents, such as pdf or ppt files. Since the average distance between the central library and users is 1,000 km, easy access and document delivery are emphasized. Dr. Zhang emphasized the interactive information services and looking for what the users don’t know what exactly they need. 他强调“去馆舍化，去层级化，提供研究人员还不知道的信息源。” Library’s metadata has been provided to Google Scholar. The Chinese Science Citation Database has been integrated into the ISI Web of Knowledge, which will help to promote the Chinese scientific research worldwide.

The library tour after the meeting reminded us what Dr. Zhang said. The building is quiete and empty except for the first floor. We rushed to one of TTOD’s processing centre where many young people work day and night to scan and process newspapers, journals and disserations, etc. They work in different shifts to keep the scanners and computers running all the time. The group was impressed by their efficiency.

星期六晚上与杨爱东久别重逢，她一定让我见识一下当今北京人的周末晚宴，害得我翘了人大的宴请，打车奔往东城大董烤鸭。果然名不虚传，前厅里到处都是等位子的老外，人手一杯鸡尾酒。每一道菜都像一幅画，但我们有太多的话题，好像美食对我没有太多的魅力。几位老同学都不见老，话语幽默，情绪饱满。半夜爱东开车送我回家，这是回国后第一次回家，放下行李，赶紧打车回海淀，因为第二天又是行程满满。

October 19th, Sunday, CIBTC arranged the visit of the Bird Nest, the only sightseeing during the two weeks. An elementary school was having its sport festival. While we were walking inside of the Nest, I’ve got a phone call from 张超，她正在鸟巢开运动会，多巧呀，还那末牛！在她的带领下我们去小崔俯瞰鸟巢的新家指手画脚一番，午饭又吃得简单而精彩。姐妹4个得意忘形把个小餐馆感染得只听得到我们的声音。打工的小妹小弟们都上来问我们为何这末高兴。 珍本的老板刘军一席讲演，让我中午的激情继续燃烧，也让我从中了解到中国书商的运作规则和困难。这家民营企业与大三家有着太多的不同。 光天把珍本安排进来大家都无怨言反倒受益匪浅。

晚饭后临时上门的中央文献研究室的领导面对的已经是精疲力竭的我们。他们勇于面对国外学者主动寻求合作的态度让我感动。与人大图书馆形成鲜明的对照。 The unscheduled meeting with Ms. Zhang Peng and Zheng Zhaohong from the Party Literature Research Center were important. I need to make the note here and inform Prof. Cheek, Nick and Yoel about my findings and encourage them to benefit from the Center.

Saturday, October 18th. We walked through campus in the morning breeze to visit the library and the Information Centre for Social Sciences. We have been subscribing to its series that offer value added resources and waiting for its online version. But comparing with other digital content providers, the Centre came to the late start, faces challenge of opening the oversea’s market. The library is in traditional setting, and pretty empty that Saturday morning. I was quite disappointed at the meeting. The leaders, Ms. Liu and Song, didn’t sound that welcoming for use of their special collections from Yan’an.

The afternoon forum was too long, and the copyright officials’ presence made me wonder if they were the reason that the Centre could not digitize their products sooner. The head of the China Archives of Publications provided an interesting presentation focusing on AV materials. It sounded like that users can benefit from its collections on the web. But we were not given time to ask questions.