Chinese Canadian Library Weblog

Summer in Vancouver can be this hot! except for last Saturday, when we gathered in Lingbo’s house when the rain brought us breeze. I sat by the window next to the garden and the colorful sky, where I enjoyed chatting through the cool night. The sound of fireworks reminded us how late it was, but the party went on…

Thanks to Lingbo for the cozy setting and variety of wonderful and healthy food. Above all, thanks for this opportunity to catch up with each other. I felt proud among this group of people — loving, caring and hard working professionals who not only share the same growing pain, but similar dreams for the future. Big congrats to those who just became librarians this summer! and the same to our second generation who have started making their own livings.

I assume librarians in China, like Shaorong, have to give up on the conference this year. Went through the program list and only saw one presenter from 清华. Thanks to its Blog and Twitter, Those who can’t make the trip to Vancouver can get connected and even interact with the attendees.

Alex from A-Train came in for this character. He wants to have a creative and pretty image carved to his bass guitar. Seals dictionaries in Asian Library met his needs. I was curious about his interests of combining musical events with Chinese culture, and checked out his web site. A photo caught my eye, but I can’t link or paste it here. Alex and his band, made up by black musicians on the stage, was performing with a traditional Chinese dancer. I would love to take the kids to a concert like that!

No time for the congregation, but did remember to pick up my diploma on the way to Asian from LPC. “Congratulations!” The person at the Brock Hall desk was very cheerful when she handed me the diploma. At that moment, all the MAPPS folks came back to my mind. I miss my classmates who are all over the world now, and my profs. Oh, how much I enjoyed learning from them. Now, with all the confidence and clear mind, stronger sense of belonging and commitment, I am achieving more at work.

Anna stopped by my office. We both looked at Ken’s reply from USC, and fascinated by his finding from 1930’s LA Times. When Anna tried to point something on the screen, she knocked over my coffee mug, and the poor diploma… I really meant it when I calmed down Anna. It’s just a piece of paper, and all the knowledge and happy memories will be with me forever.

Glad to see some new faces at Asian Library recently. The girl was thrilled finding her favourate journal on the browsing table-San lian sheng huo zhou kan. A young man, sounds like a graduate student, asked me for Chinese text books in his field–热动力学。A soft speaking girl needs academic resources on 独生子女问题研究, and she worried about the requirement of her first academic paper in English.

According to the public affair news release in December of 2008, thousands of students from China currently study at UBC, up from just 291 in 1996. Asian Library may disappoint some of them, it definately should serve these students and help them to survive and enjoy their UBC time.

They always come in the summer time, and this time is a documentary film on dance in Tang dynasty. They usually request for original images and artifacts from various time period and provinces. They like to use poems or proverbs from China, so request for translation. Sort of fun reference work, but very time consuming. Would be nice to delegate some work to our students.

Feel lucky meeting so many colleagues sharing common interests. I’ve learned the most from Mr. Ma’s presentation on large set reprints and duplicate titles among them. More and more libraries are going for shelf-ready and the service prices are dropping.  Chinese e-books  and movie DVD collections have become common. Besides popular culture and film studies, science and technology in Asia are the new focus of many researchers who demand for information from ancient time to the latest.

I enjoyed my companies to Seattle–Kat and Lorn and admire their energy. The most popular words at the conference were partnership, Liasion and collaboration, including with East Asian counterparts. I wonder if CEAL should collaborate with ACRL in the future besides AAS.

I ran into Harry, my first supervisor librarian, in the hallway. He was happy for my progress after UW, and promised a visit this summer to UBC.  Another exciting moment was meeting Mindy at her poster, which attracted many people as you can tell from the photo. She gained scholarship from the ACRL, which I heard very competitive. What a start as a baby librarian!

The School of Library, Archival and Information Studies and the SLAIS Alumni Association are going to host the 2009 Meet the SLAIS Grads event. The event will take place at the Vancouver Public Library Alice McKay Room, April 3, 2009 from 5:30-8 pm.

Lingbo is a regular goer and sponsor. Hope more of us can make time to attend.

Good for Karen and Shuyong at U of IL. at Urbana-Champaign for getting this grant. CALA is calling for applicants to present in China. The two-year “Think Globally, Act Globally” partnership project will facilitate collaboration, exchange of information, professional development of librarians from U.S. and China, and developing a web portal for resources in support of China/East Asian Studies in the U.S.

With the connections and human capital, we should be able to work out something like this, not individually like in the past years, but organized and funded by the two countries.