Tag: CEAL

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Highlight of the Trip

Toronto CentreThis year’s CEAL conference focused on the TS restructure, and we at UBC have been there and have done it. Keynote speech by Prof. Dai Jinhua, Friendship with my fellow CEAL members and ROM visit are some highlights of the trip.

Thanks to Stephen’s invitation and arrangement, I was able to skip the official visit to UT and ROM on the 15th, and made it to the keynote. We arrived in the Grand Ballroom earlier to occupy the front seats. Gail Hershatter, the president of the association greeted Haihui and chatted about the necessity of the English version of her book. Zhong Jing had an exciting catch-up with her Peking U prof. Dai. I only read Dai’s writing on Chinese cinema for the MAPPS. She’s tall, has a firm voice, which makes her speech more poweful. Instead of movie or popular culture critic, she criticized both communism and developmental capitalism in the post cold-war era. She tried to redefine current nature of the Chinese society, its class structure and a new global position.

ROM

Haihui has gained all my respect from previous years’ workshops and conference. No matter how intensive the programs are, she always makes time talking and encouraging me with her insights and ideas as a historian. I have found the book she recommended in Koerner: The Warmth of Other Suns.

The Royal Ontorio Museum special visit from its back door was once in a life time experience. We were amazed by Dr. Shen’s intro–over 30,000 objects from imperial China, and only less than 10% is on current display. Over 8,000 people visit the museum everyday during the spring break. We spent a whole afternoon there and were still excited at dinner time reflecting on our visit. Like those stories behind the artifacts and our rare books, there is a fate in everything, so is in our friendship. Feel lucky among my kind and knowledgeable CEAL fellows. Stephen is especially helpful with the Council and Society’s official programs and our small group annual tradition. No regret on this trip. When I rushed through the city centre blocks between meetings, I saw the CN Tower behind some skyscrapers, but had no time to pay a visit. Caught my evening flight with very sleepy eyes. Is it the jet lag? or the bright sunset in Toronto?

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Professional Development Tech Trends

All about Rare Books

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.

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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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Professional Development

Meeting in Chicago

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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.

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