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Experience Libraries in China National Library of China Tech Trends What others are saying

The Bar and the Hall

I couldn’t participate in the TS workshop on the 31st due to this China-North America Library Conference new project meeting. We met at the Tropics Bar in the Ali’i Tower at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. The dicussion was focused on the East Asian or Chinese rare books. It’s interesting to learn the uncertainty of LC and all sorts of digitizations going on at each library. Anchi is not only pretty, confident but also bright and flexible, who brought everyone of us into the discussion. What’s the relationship between the two national libraries? Almost all the large East Asian libraries are digitizing the rarebooks, will there be a platform or one-stop searching for our users?

Anchi wrapped up the meeting on time. Michael and I rushed to the exhibition hall at the Convention Centre, where I saw lots of UBC profs. I caught Xu Shu from Shanghai Library and we quickly exchanged our ideas where we had to keep others waiting. This year’s exhibit had a reduced scale, but still nice to see the demos, new publications and databases. Above all, I saw Michael’s digitization project result, some sample images and rare titles were quite eye-catching. It’s very nice of him sharing his latest experience digitizing the rare collection at UW with support form the NCL.

East View’s evening program was fun, and hard to believe I won the prize for guessing IPO as the top search word in CNKI. We had to skip the party time because we had more evening meetings scheduled.

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Events Experience Libraries in China National Library of China Professional Development Tech Trends Uncategorized What others are saying

CJK Joint Session

Walking along the beach then into the Hilton Village and Ballroom, I saw a whole lot more attendees on March 30th. This is the first time when Chinese, Japanese and Korean librarians meet for common interest instead of having separate committee meetings. The new format worked out nicely, but we could still cut some speakers out due to their emptiness.

The SCSL dinner and the Second General Meeting, also called 神仙会。The meeting lasted too long, so I brievely talked about our rare collections, my experience of studying Pang Collection and the challenges we are facing in terms of preservation and digitization. I enjoyed the afternoon and evening meetings because I spent some quality time with my mentors, Haihui, Wu Ge, Xu Hong, etc. and I met with new friends–Wang Jun, Li Yan and his funny assistant.

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Events Experience Professional Development

Plenary and Public Services Meetings

We were lucky having Dr. Evelyn Rowsky again this year telling us her own experience of the enormous improvement of electronic data transmission. As the Qing history scholar, Evelyn confirmed the impact of the e-resources on the climate of East Asian studies. She suggested some areas that need further attention in the near future.

Paula Mochida, Interim University Librarian, University of Hawaii at Manoa, convinced us the pressure of reducing duplicates and print collection at academic libraries in North America. Sharon mentioned about nCiku, which has been linked to my subject guides, but hasn’t been really recommended to our students yet. Hope some folks have already picked it up. After a whole day program, I enjoyed the sunset on Waikiki.

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Events Experience Professional Development

University of Hawaii

Started greeting my CEAL fellows at Hilton’s Lagoon. We were all very happy for this annual reunion. The OCLC CJK User Group discussion on the 29th of March was open and forward looking, which made me admire Sharon more. I learned a great deal from this open discussion. Sharon wrapped up the session as scheduled. We quickly gathered around Ye Ding, and he led us to the exhibit at University of Hawaii–Reformer’s Brush: Modernity and traditional media in China. Works include paintings and calligraphy from late 19th- and early 20th-century China on loan from the collections of Ernest and Letah Lee and Chin-tang Lo. The Reformer’s Brush showcases the artworks, lives and ambitions of leaders Chiang Kai-shek, Mei Lanfang, Liang Qichao, Kang Youwei, Guo Moruo and others. Every display item has bilingual intro and portrait of Minguo figures. I especially like the painting and Lychi and Green Peppers by Qibaishi and Zhang Zhidong’s calligraphic work 读书行路觉悟,知足惜福感恩. We enjoyed the special guided tour and wanted to learn more from the exhibit catalogue.

Ye Ding took us to the well-known East-West Center on U. of Hawaii Campus. Despite the funding shortage, we saw many people gathered. The Japanese tea house and the pond in the garden reminded me our Nitobe.

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