Chinese Canadian Library Weblog

Library and Wikis

Hello all,
Here are some pictures of the city of Strasbourg and the ISU library where I am working for the time being, enjoy!

WorldCat.org provides a permanent destination page and search box that lets a broader range of people discover the riches of library-held materials cataloged in the WorldCat database. More details…

Bonjour, everybody out there in Vancouver! Meant to send this greeting message earlier, but it took me quite a while to get everything settled down. Arrived here in Strasbourg on June 23rd and spent the first two days sightseeing a little bit of this beautiful historical town. Started to work the third day doing some preparation work for the upcoming Summer Session Program (SSP 06) held at the International Space University(ISU), where I’m going to spend the next two and a half months working in its library.

You may know more about ISU from the link I’ve provided if you like. I came to know a little bit about the university during my job application process, but only after arriving here, did I learn from the students that it was quite a famous organization in the field of space engineering technology. It is especially well known for its annual summer session program, which is hosted in different country each year and attracts over 100 students from all over the world for each session. This year is the 18th anniversary of the ISU Summer Session Program and there are 104 students from 27 countries coming to this session, which is held in its Central Campus based in Strasbourg, France. There have been students from China since the early 1990s and there is a big delegation this year from China(12 students + 3 staff members), only 2nd to the Canadian delegation(around 20 students + 5 staff members(I’m one of the five)) among all the participatory countries.

Since it’s a very specialized university, the library has quite a specialized collection and VERY small(only over 7000 items plus several online databases), but it has a very nice location and one side of the library is all glass facing the patio of the main building. It’s a solo-librarian library, which means the librarian has to do everything(and that’s me :>) I’m working as the front-line librarian for the SSP. The head librarian works in her own office most of the time and she is going to take a 3-week vacation in next month and will leave me alone to run the library! I feel lucky to come to such a small library where I can have my hands in every aspect of the librarianship, from cataloging to shelving, from circulation to reference, and from interlibrary loan to information literacy instruction. So far I’ve given a library tour to all of the 104 students and held three library workshops together with the head librarian. I’ve learned how to catalog and already entered over 100 new books into the library catalog. One thing I didn’t expect to learn here is to stamp dates on books when checking out, believe it or not, many libraries here are still doing that.

I’m sure this job will turn out to be a truly rewarding learning experience for me and I am really enjoying what I am doing here. By the way, as a staff, I do get some perks from the SSP, for example, I’m allowed to attend all the distinguished panel speaking sessions, and Liwei Yang(the first Chinese astronaut went to space in 2003) is coming next Monday to give a lecture, and I’ll be able to attend that lecture too.

I’d very much like to visit the public libraries and other university libraries here in the next 2 months to gain as much information regarding the librarianship here as I can. I’ll keep all of you posted when I come across some interesting findings. Bye for now, my friends and colleagues, wish you all a fabulous summer!

I am now working on the World Cultures Committee at FVRL. One of the tasks assigned to me is to find out ways for access to our multilingual collection (it’s a 12 non-English collection) through OPAC. As far as I know, this is one of the most challenging topics in our profession. Many organizations and individuals have ended up with despair because of daunting contraints such as language expertise, lack of funding, and technology. I think as new librarians working in a non-Chinese speaking environment, everyone of us will take on a task of this kind one day or another. So, I invite you all to join the discussion.

There are organizations, such as large academic libraries and national libraries jointly across countries, working on the issue. To me, they are in a good position to tackle the issue as they have better resources. However, my concern is what we can do for a minor system with less resources, i.e. individual local libraries with a growing multi-ethnic population. I am thinking of providing access points through OPAC, such as subject headings and name headings in English. Are there people out there who have experience in this field and can offer me some advice?

在湖边露营三天， 湖水清澈见底

樱桃园边的一个小湖，如同仙境

I just came back from my vacation a while ago. Because my parents came from China to visit me, I took them to quite a few places since this is their first trip to Canada. During our trip, I also visited a few local libraries: Kelowna public library, Banff public Library, Squamish public library, Montreal Public Library (I forget which branch it was), Blacker-Wood Library of Biology at McGill University, North York Central of Toronto Public Library, Mid-Manhattan library and Donnell Library centre of New York Public library, and East Asian Library at Columbia University.

It was a fun and interesting trip. But too bad I missed the Research Library of NYPL at 5th Ave & 42nd Street because I didn’t know it is close on Mondays. The building is very nice though, and it reminds me the movie The Day after Tomorrow.

I am not going to introduce each library I went, you can easily find information on their websites. I just want to share the experience with two Chinese librarians I met in New York.

In a sunny morning, I went to East Asian Library at Columbia University. The first thing caught my eyes is magazine HOW, which is a Chinese magazine about fashion, cosmetic and trendy stuff, doesn’t seem like fit in such a serious academic environment. I was also impressed after I found out I can use both traditional and simplified characters to search their catalogue. I decided to meet their Chinese librarian. After 20 minutes wait while I enjoyed HOW, I met Chengzhi Wang, the Chinese Studies Librarian. He is very nice and immediately reminds me my professors in the university back in China. We had very nice chat, from housing price in NYC to career path. I really appreciate that he can spare 40 minutes with me during his busy day (not because he gave me a souvenir at the end) . I have learned a lot from him.

In the other afternoon, I went to Donnell Library after I visited MoMA. The reason I went there is I was told by a librarian in Mid-Manhattan Library that this library is the only one in their system collects Chinese materials. After I went in the library, (BTW, I was very surprised that there were security checks in both libraries), the Chinese Librarian spotted me and pointed me to a direction right away “Romance is over there”…Er….I don’t read Romance….(maybe it’s time to get new outfits to change my image)

I browsed their collection. It is smaller than I expected, maybe this has something to do with their demographic numbers. Finally I grabbed a chance to introduce myself to the Chinese Librarian, Hung-Yun Chang. We spent about half hour to discuss issues on collection development, programming, staffing and etc. It was a very informative talk. I also appreciate that Mr. Chang shared his over 20 years experience with me. (Yes, Mr. Chang, everybody in the library calls him Mr. Chang).

Apparently, both librarians know Jing well, they both asked me to say hi to Jing. I guess it is hard to find somebody in this field who doesn’t know Jing. It’s really great that we have Jing here, such a great librarian and mentor.

For those of you who are interested in Systems, please check out the requirement.

The University of Maryland Libraries is seeking qualified applicants for the position of Chinese Cataloger/Subject Specialist. The person in this position will be responsible for all aspects of managing the Chinese language materials and related user services. For more information on UM Libraries, visit the website.

I met an Indonesian girl when we hiked to the Lynn Peak last Friday. She is very interested in becoming a librarian. The problem is, however, she is severely hearing-impaired. She communicates with people (in English) through lip-reading, sign language, and handwriting. Do any of you happen to know some library study programs that actually take in hearing-impaired students? Or is it totally a mission impossible for her?