Category: What others are saying

Dr. Khalid Malik has been appointed as UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in China since August 2003. He came to UBC meeting with China specialists and delivered a well-attended lecture. As one of the department head mentioned, every department at UBC has some projects related to China going on.

China has made greatest sustained economic expansion in human history by not following the policies that others made. Dr. Malik thinks that China has strong institutions gradually changing to meet the reform needs. He mentioned about social capital and strong cohesion thanks to historic equality. Sadly, China has become the most unequal society in the world.

Ching Kwan Lee’s talk at Departmetn of Sociology drew a big audience. It was about her fieldwork in Zambia and Tanzania on two Chinese investment projects. What impressed me the most was that she emphasized on the class struggles against casualization instead of tensions between races. Some interesting points she made: Chinese managers abandoned socialism and they are fully convinced that they know how to develop a poor country. China’s uniqueness is not because what it does but the attention it has received.

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.

I just came back from the Florida Library Association Annual Conference at St. Pete, FL. There were two interesting sessions about the future of libraries. I walked out of the two sessions with, well, not exactly daunting spirit, but definitely not with a singing heart. The keynote speaker was Jane Frye Williams, a wonderful speaker who is widely known in the library world as a futurist for libraries. For those of you who haven’t heard her talk before, I would recommend you to go to her site and check out her webcast archive section. Another session “The Future of Academic Libraries” was presented by Joseph J. Branin, the library director of the Ohio State University. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my laptop to the keynote and didn’t take notes for the session. But I am sure you’ll get most of the gist of Jane’s prediction of the future of the libraries from the archival speech she gave back in 2005 . Here I’m going to share with you some highlights from the 2nd talk I mentioned above:
1. According to the study “Recent environmental scans and user studies” done by OCLC in 2005, 89% electronic information searches begin at a search engine, whereas only 2% from a library website.
2. New roles for librarians as “knowledge managers”.
3. The library has become a key in shaping students’ college choice. (Facilities Manager, March 2006)
4. Librarians(at OSU?) don’t do reference work anymore. All librarians at OSU must become subject specialists in their designated areas and provide research assistance services at points of need. They are expected to be heavily involved in the whole process of the research projects in their areas, including collecting research data and managing the data(which is only a vision for the time being).

Isn’t it a wonderful feeling to belong to a caring and supportive 组织? Thank you for sharing your achievements and experience with all of us.

Thank you, Jing, for organizing!
Thank you, Jan, great location!
Thank you, Heather, for calling!
Thank you, Lili, for being the photographer!

Thank you to all the wonderful chefs.
Thank you to all the drivers.
Most of all, thank you to the family members who understand and support our Chinese Canadian Librarians community.

You all contributed to our successful second AGM. Thank YOU and take care.

By Todd Gilman
Chronicle of Higher Education Tuesday, October 3, 2006

An interesting article on which argues that students trained by professors and librarians who cooperate and affirm each other’s role fare better than those forced to bear the brunt of troubled relations. Todd identifies several reasons why they may not work well together and some questions faculty might want to ask their students to see if/why they need to work with librarians.