Chinese Canadian Library Weblog

We tried a new format of orientation this term. Pascale from Political Science told me about her thesis proposal on China’s natural resource industry. The challenge is to collect and analyse different data sets from different sources, such as the associations on top of the National Statistical Bureau. She told me there are a whole lot more polisci graduate students this year and agreed to pass my invitation on.

A big group of Chinese graduate students showed up at around 4:30. Most are new from China and in business or science. They are lucky to have a leader like Yu Rong helping them to learn about UBC within the first month of their arrival. I started the tour from the lobby on the history of the Asian Centre, then Puban, then the change of user demands. I emphasized on the services UBC Libraries offer, which got their questions pouring out. They are polite and sharp and their literary and traditional cultural knowledge is quite amazing. One girl pointed out that the Chinese collection is outdated and hopes to hold some China related events with us.

刚送走国图的郭社长一行，又参加了招待会。省长的发言声情并茂，开始还让大家有点意外。她说The faces in this （Hyatt Regent Ball）room represent Canada well. 她还说上任后第一次国际访问目的地即将是中国。 在场的虽偶尔有其他族裔面孔，但大多还是同胞。看到文化和教育领事忙得不可开交。很多同乡会的代表–和朱先生共用一张吧台，他穿戴整齐、仪表堂堂，对自己的台山同乡会深感自豪。告诉我刚拉出去70几位会友去亚洲坐游轮。张萍是温州同乡会的，毕竟在北京做过律师，谈吐不俗。学妹徐君令人惊艳，见面也很亲热，告诉我在首都机场与学弟Brady相见不相识的情景。当年虽然不修边幅，Braidy还是一表人才，我俩曾经是一门课的硕果仅存，其中故事就当做过去的秘密吧。现在北京搞金融的Southern Gentleman西装革履一定难寻当年穷学生的影子啦。

It’s nice to see new students comming in. I enjoy this orientation and instruction season, but can’t believe how busy this year is. Many new courses, including Manchu Studies. Will meet with Prof. Nappi on how to support her Manchu Seminars. Yesi is coming for the Wat Memorial Lecture.
Still trying to streamline the acquisition and save our time with vendors’ help. The Three-year branch project deserves some energy as well.

Loyal students Noa and Anna have kindly offered their experience and comments on our Library to the video. Thanks to Jodie’s help, the research guides have been updated.

What’s really worth mentioning here is both Hye-Jin and Jodie got job offers. I am proud of our GAAs. (This post was written before my accident)

The longest stay in Chicago was 10 months in 1997, and this trip was counted by hours. The taxi receipt shows 6:56 pm of Sept. 1st. I beat the heavy traffic and had time to change into a dress and snap a shot of the sunset from my room. The dinner meeting was fun and relaxing. First time meeting Paul and Barbara, very suprised by Jiaxun joining U. of Chicago. I like his sincere and confucian smile.

Had a quick morning walk near our hotel Club Quarters, and saw how tall its tower is from the opposite side of the river. No time for breakfast. The hotel’s business centre has coffee, and Shuyong brought us treats. The meeting is important to have my questions answered and bond us as a team. Weird! Very first failed check-in online with United, better leave for the airport earlier.

Shared a taxi with Dr. Cheng, who invited my writings to his series. We had a non-stop talk and the ride seemed to be short! Checked in at the front counter without a seat number on the boarding pass?! We two picked a central location for the last meal in Chicago and chatted more before we waved good-bye. I didn’t realize that I had to walk that far to reach my gate, packed and ready for boarding! I questioned if I could still use my e-ticket seat since it’s not printed to my boarding pass. The busy lady looked up right away, said: Where were you? I called you so many times and now it’s all full, you can’t get onto this flight!

Ha! that’s why, all the weird things happened to me! I told the lady that I promised my kids to have dinner together at home and please help me to keep my promise. She put me on the direct flight instead of transferring in Seattle, first class with future travel credits. Didn’t mean to irritate others at the counter, I told the lady: It must be my lucky day, having yummy lunch with my friend, first-class home and dinner with my family. I ran passing 20 more gates to catch my new flight. I had no room for the 1st-class food, but did have different drinks to celebrate the successful trip and the meeting of TGAG. Waking up from a nap, we were already above Mount Baker.

Although thinking globally almost every day through out the last two years, I’ve only worked locally. As a bunch of new programs calling my name, I really like to take a part in them–presenting at Area Studies International Conference at Xiamen U. , attending the workshop in Taiwan by the NCL. Now this TGAG project picked me and makes the trip tightly scheduled together with generous funding outside of UBC. I could sense the trouble and extra work of the TGAG by choosing a Canadian. Can’t wait to meet and get to know them in Chicago.

Received many congrats from colleagues since the TGAG news was exposed in the HR Bulletin. Glad to know that I might hang out with several UBC folks in Asia if my schedule allows. Besides revisiting the potential projects with Peking U and NLC, I’d love to meet the librarians at the Xiamen Children’s Library. We stayed in touch for so many years, but never met in person. The annual reports, thank you letters and drawings from the little readers always light up my holiday seasons. Love to volunteer in person during this trip even just for a few hours . Better to conact the Foundation now.

The students are keen to learn even in this hot afternoon. They remind me my first term at UW as an international student. They are really lucky and being taken good care of by their program manager, Laura, and Ye as the TA, even before they start the official program. Katherine, the dedicated librarian, told us about Jump Start that covers broader areas. She also mentioned about Wimba for large audience online instruction. Will get involved in Jump Start and try out Wimba asap.

Mr. Peter Eng brought a group of scholars from Macau, who need to interview the founders of UM in town. I remember what Peter told me about how that university was built and the support he gathered worldwide in early 1980’s…Getting to know Peter is the best experience this summer. Our chat about Kissinger’s book (not available at UBCV, many holds on the public libraries’ copies) and Puban Collection inspired new ideas. 我视Peter如良师，他不仅融会中西文化，在加拿大成功创业和守业，热心教育和慈善，更为难得的是他的睿智和谦逊。尽管2011年的温哥华多阴霾和雨水，与这样的智者相会让我如沐春风。难怪7月6日那天格外温暖和晴朗。

First time on UVic campus was on April 9th for BC China Scholars’ Symposium. I didn’t expect that sort of strong response to our presentation…I enjoyed my company of Chris, Allison, Tim, Anna, Desmond, and getting to know more China specialists in BC. On the ferry back home, I walked into Allan and Greg who just finished the BCLA annual conference. Greg not only bought me Starbucks, but also informed me the changes and his concerns of RPL.

Digital Humanity Summer Institute brought me to UVic the second time, and stayed for an entire week. Instead of bunnies, I saw deers on my way back to the dorm. Our DigiFun class really had a great time together. We quickly worked out a video report by dipping into each feature we covered, sound, video, web design. We skipped ahead to web 2.0 by posting to youtube.

Just found time to record the last sessions of AAS/CEAL conference. April 1st Panel 289: Chinese Ancient Classics Publishing: Trends & Challenges attracted not only librarians but also scholars including our BC profs.

The NCL director, Ms. Zeng presented the work they have done on the over 50,000 rare titles in Taiwan. They have also funded LC and UW thousands of digital rare books, and uploaded their own rare images to WDL.

President Li Yan, Ancient Classics Publishing Committee of Publishers Association of China, provided us an overview of classics publishing. The government funding was increased up to 20 million Renminbi in 2008. Besides the 80 institutes and thousands of professionals, the annual program has trained over 500 librarians.

Professor Wu Ge talked about his union catlog of Chinese ancient classics. He emphasized the plan of investigating classic collections overseas and getting the rare content back to China. “海外調查, 引歸流失文獻”. I told Prof. Wu over the buffet dinner what I have gained from studying our rare items. They brought me back to Ming Dynasty with full of historical connections. I feel calm, peaceful and am eager to check out all the related sources. He was happy about my progress and 漸入佳境的自我感覺.

I also enjoyed the April 2 panel titled “Who writes the local history”, organized by our own Haihui and Zhaohui as one of the presenters. Prof. Carlitz used Jiading as an example to verify that gazetteers are crucial sources of local information, but they are far from neutral or value-free. Prof. Dennis from Wisconsin introduced the Pelliot gazetteer collection housed at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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.