Transcript Slide 1

Striving for Excellence
A Progress report for 2004
LC Asian Division
Hwa-Wei Lee
Chief, Asian Division
Library of Congress
[email protected]
New Leadership
• Dr. Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian
for Library Services
• Reorganization – Five Directorates
– Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access
– Collections and Services
– Partnerships & Outreach Programs
– Preservation
– Technology Policy
March 2005
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Deanna’s Goals for 2005
• Goal 1: To collect and preserve the record of
America’s creativity and the world’s knowledge.
• Goal 2: To provide the most effective methods
for connecting the library user to the content
he/she is seeking.
• Goal 3: To deepen the general understanding of
American cultural, intellectual, and social life.
• Goal 4: To provide leadership for the library
community.
March 2005
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Collections and Services
• Under the direction of Dr. Carolyn Brown.
• Asian Division is one of the 17 divisions in
the Directorate of Collections and
Services.
March 2005
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Reorganization of the Asian Division
• Aimed at improving the overall performance of the
Division
– Creating two new sections: Collection Services and
Scholarly Services.
– Establishing five area collection/service teams.
– Adding the position of Automation Operations
Coordinator.
– Creating a shared vision and common goals.
– Developing a strategic plan.
– fostering a spirit of cooperation and teamwork among all
staff members in the Division.
March 2005
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Organizational Structure
• Head, Scholarly Services Section (search is underway)
– Chinese and Mongolian Collection/Service Team (Dr. Mi
Chu Wiens, Coordinator)
– Japanese Collection/Service Team (Thaddeus Ohta,
Coordinaor)
– Korean Collection/Service Team (Sonya Lee,
Coordinator)
– Southeast Asian Collection/Service Team (Sirikanya
Schaeffer, Coordinator)
– South Asian Collection/Service Team (Dr. Allen
Thrasher)
• Head, Collection Services Section (Judy Lu)
• Administrative Services
March 2005
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The Size of Asian Collections (1/31/2005)
Area
China/Mongolia
Monographs
Serials
Serials
(Volumes)
(Active titles)
(Inactive titles)
976,124
5,645
9,291
Japan
1,148,281
5,954
14,485
Korea
245,184
1,065
5,598
Southeast Asia
168,508
2,716
8,462
South Asia
222,509
1,589
2,080
Total
2,760,606
16,969
39,916
March 2005
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Staff Changes (1)
•
Newly added staff:
– Special Assistant to the Chief (Dr. An Chi Hoh
Dianu)
– One Reference Librarian for China (Dr. Jeffery
Wang)
– Two Reference Librarians for Japan (Eiichi Ito
and Takeo Nishioka)
– Two Reference Librarians for Southeast Asia
(Dr. Kathryn Anderson and Lien Huong Fiedler)
– One Reference Librarian for South Asia
(Nuzhat Khatoon)
March 2005
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Staff Changes (2)
• Yoko Akiba passed away on
2/10/2004.
• Dr. Chi Wang retired on 10/31/2004.
• Judy Lu promoted to the Head of
Collection Service Section on 11/
/2004.
March 2005
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Major Activities (1)
•
•
The Division’s Five-year Strategic Plan
(2003-2008) was put into action in 2003
and was updated twice for 2004 and
2005, respectively.
As a part of the Division’s outreach
program to build community relations
and supports, the Asian Division Friends
Society was formally established in
January 2004.
March 2005
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Web Site of the Friends Society
March 2005
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Major Activities (2)
•
•
The Luce China Project (2000-2004) to
improve the contemporary Chinese
collection Continued into the 4th year.
Dr. Mi Chu Wiens received a one-year,
$40,000 grant from the Chiang ChingKuo Foundation to prepare a full and
authoritative bibliographic description of
the many uncataloged Chinese rare
books.
March 2005
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Major Activities (3)
•
•
Dr. Wiens also assisted the Geography and
Map Division in working with the Academia
Sinica (Taiwan) to digitize selected pre-1879
Chinese maps.
Prof. Li Xiaocong of Peking University
published his previous work at LC in a
beautiful volume, A Descriptive Catalogue of
the Traditional Chinese Maps Collected in
the Library of Congress, published by Beijing
Cultural Relics Publishing House in 2004.
March 2005
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Major Activities (4)
•
•
The Japan Area Team has been working with
the International Research Center for
Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) to digitize
selected Japanese rare books and prints.
Thaddeus Ohta, Coordinator of the Japan Area
Team, assisted the Geography and Map
Division to display its treasured collection of
Inoh maps at several major museums in Japan
throughout 2004.
March 2005
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Major Activities (5)
•
•
LC and the National Central Library
(Taiwan) will undertake a cooperative
project to digitize selected Chinese rare
books in LC’s collection and will make it
accessible online to scholars and
researcher worldwide.
Sonya Lee discussed with the National
Institute of Korean History about
digitizing a portion of LC’s Korean rare
books.
March 2005
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Major Activities (6)
•
•
Lien Huong Fiedler visited the Institute of HanNom (Sino-Vietnamese) Studies in Hanoi and
discussed the possibility of digitizing a selected
number of rare books from the Institute’s rare
book collection.
Three online bibliographies and two databases
are now searchable on the Asian Division
website. They are the Chinese Bibliography,
the Korean Bibliography, the Philippine
Bibliography, the Korean Serials Database,
and the Naxi Manuscripts.
March 2005
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Significant Acquisitions (1)
•
•
Several Chinese publishers who
participated in the Exhibit at the 2004
Annual Conference of AAS donated 380
reprints of Chinese classics and rare books
valued at $13,098.
One hundred titles of the most valuable
18th Century to early 20th Century stitchbound Chinese rare books and manuscripts
were purchased in August 2004 from the
British rare book collector Arthur
Probsthain.
March 2005
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Significant Acquisitions (2)
•
•
a collection of seventeen pieces of
manuscripts, letters, and religious objects
that used to belong to the renowned
American Presbyterian missionary printer
Dr. William Gamble (1830-1886), were
received as a gift from a member of the
Gamble family, Prof. Ellis Dill.
Another important Chinese acquisition
during the past year is Qianlong Tripitaka
(Qian-long da zang jing. Taipei: Chuanzheng Co., 2002, in 138 volumes).
March 2005
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Significant Acquisitions (3)
•
•
A special gift of a 17th Century wood-blockprinted miniature version of multi-volume-set of
the complete book of rhymes for Chinese poetry
(Shi Yun Quan Bi) was donated to the Library by
a renowned Chinese rare book collector Dezhao
Zhou.
Gene Smith, Director of the Tibetan Buddhist
Resource Center in New York donated the first
group of CDs (1,001 volumes) of Research
Library of Scanned Tibetan Literature:
Approximately 12,000 Volumes of Tibetan
Texts.
March 2005
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Significant Acquisitions (4)
•
•
A gift agreement has been signed by Dr. Melvyn
Goldstein to donate the digital Tibetan Oral
History Archive, which contains over 1,000 hours
of interviews with Tibetans, both in Tibet and in
exile, documenting Tibet’s transition during the
past 50 years.
A 27 volume set of the Collected Works of the 8th
Karmapa, Mi-bskyod-rdo-rje, was received as a
gift from the Tsadra Foundation, as part of their
rare text reprint series.
March 2005
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Significant Acquisitions (5)
•
•
A 101-volume encyclopedia of collected
writings of the ‘Brug-pa Bka’-brgyud-pa sect
of Tibetan Buddhism was received from the
New Delhi Office. This important reprint
edition was recently published in Nepal.
Also purchased was a complete set of 2003
issues of Bod ljongs zhib ‘jug, the
scholarly journal of the Tibet Academy of
Social Sciences, Lhasa, and a complete set
of a major literary journal published in
Lhasa from 1988-1997.
March 2005
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Significant Acquisitions (6)
•
•
A collection of rare Mongolian books and
documents, primarily legal materials from
1917 to 1946 were purchased. It includes
many books by leading scholars from that
period which were banned shortly after
publication, and which had been hidden by
the vendor’s grandfather.
A donor, Stefan Leigh, gave $4,000 to the
Library for the purchase of 14 Japanese
publications on Zen doctrines.
March 2005
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Significant Acquisitions (7)
•
•
Thomas Rimer and Laurence Mus Rimer donated
books from the library of the great French
Southeast Asianist, Paul Mus, which also
incorporated that of another French Southeast
Asia scholar, Suzanne Karpeles. The collection is
particularly useful to fill gaps in the Library’s
coverage of French Indochina.
Kenneth X. Robbins, M.D., donated to the library
another 10,000 legal documents on stamped
paper from Indian princely states, bringing his
total donations to almost 50,000 documents.
March 2005
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Significant Acquisitions (8)
•
Another major acquisition of great
importance to the Library was the
successful purchase of the oldest known
intact Indian book, a birch bark scroll
apparently on Buddhist psychology from
Gandhara, in the border region of modern
Pakistan and Afghanistan. Its date is
estimated to be from 200 BC to 200 AD.
March 2005
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Significant Acquisitions (9)
•
To achieve the division’s goal of expanding
the collections to include electronic
resources, the Chinese and Mongolian Area
Team made great strides in the acquisition
of two large full-text electronic databases.
These are the CNKI (China National
Knowledge Infrastructure) databases for
Chinese academic journals for the years of
1999-2004 and for Chinese newspapers for
2003-2004.
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Web Site of the Asian Division
March 2005
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Portals on Asian Countries
March 2005
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Speeches & Writings (1)
• Division staff members presented papers:
– at the Symposium on The New Horizon of
Library Services toward the Better
Understanding of Asia, organized by the
National Diet Library Kansai-kan in Kyoto,
Japan.
– at the Second Shanghai International Library
Forum, held in Shanghai, China.
– at the International Conference on the
Historical Resources for the Studies of
Northeast China and Japan, held in Niigata,
Japan.
March 2005
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Speeches & Writings (2)
• Division staff members presented papers:
– at the Luce Summer Institute for East Asian
Librarians (China Focus) held at the
University of Pittsburgh.
– at a conference on the role of libraries in the
construction of knowledge about the Malay
world, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
– at the European South East Asian Studies
Conference, held in Paris, France.
– at the International Conference on Sinological
Resources in the Digital Era, held in Taipei,
Taiwan.
March 2005
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Research Grants
• Through the generous gift of Ms.
Florence Tan Moeson, Asian
Division will begin to award 10
grants each year for undergraduate
and graduate students who will
make extensive use of Asian
collections in their researches.
March 2005
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Extending Library Hours
• Currently the hours of the Asian
Reading Room are from 8:30 a.m.
to 5:00 p.m. from Monday to Friday.
• Beginning on April 9, 2005, the
Asian Reading Room will also open
for service on Saturdays for a sixmonth trial period.
March 2005
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Thanks
March 2005
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