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Striving for Excellence A Progress report for 2004 LC Asian Division

Striving for Excellence A Progress report for 2004 LC Asian Division. Hwa-Wei Lee Chief, Asian Division Library of Congress hlee@loc.gov. New Leadership. Dr. Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services Reorganization – Five Directorates Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access

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Striving for Excellence A Progress report for 2004 LC Asian Division

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  1. Striving for ExcellenceA Progress report for 2004LC Asian Division Hwa-Wei Lee Chief, Asian Division Library of Congress hlee@loc.gov

  2. 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

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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

  7. The Size of Asian Collections (1/31/2005)

  8. 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)

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. Web Site of the Friends Society

  12. 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 Ching-Kuo Foundation to prepare a full and authoritative bibliographic description of the many uncataloged Chinese rare books.

  13. 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.

  14. 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.

  15. 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.

  16. Major Activities (6) • Lien Huong Fiedler visited the Institute of Han-Nom (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.

  17. 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 stitch-bound Chinese rare books and manuscripts were purchased in August 2004 from the British rare book collector Arthur Probsthain.

  18. 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: Chuan-zheng Co., 2002, in 138 volumes).

  19. Significant Acquisitions (3) • A special gift of a 17th Century wood-block-printed 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.

  20. 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.

  21. 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.

  22. 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.

  23. 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.

  24. 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.

  25. 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.

  26. Web Site of the Asian Division

  27. Portals on Asian Countries

  28. 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.

  29. 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.

  30. 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.

  31. 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 six-month trial period.

  32. Thanks

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