I was among the seventeen member delegation of the Chinese American Librarians Association to attend the China Society for Library Science 2000 annual conference from July 17-21 in Hailar, Mongolia, China. The conference participants came from all types of libraries across China. Every province and major city sent representatives. Approximately seven hundred librarians were at the conference. The conference was divided into four groups. I attended the "Library Management and Administration" group and presented a paper on allocating materials budget in academic libraries. The participants were very interested in learning more about the American libraries. We were asked and answered many questions during and after the meetings.
After the conference, we visited the Mongolian Grassland and the nomadic Mongols' residence -- yurt. In the second week of our trip, we headed for North Eastern China and visited several museums and four libraries, including the Harbin Province Library, the Harbin Poly-tech University Library, the Korean Chinese Autonomous Region Library, and the Beijing University Library. All four libraries provide PC's for patrons to access Internet and online catalogs. The majority of reading spaces were occupied by students studying for exams, i.e., bringing their own textbooks and homework.
During the visit to Beijing University, I had an opportunity to talk with the project leader of China Academic Library & Information System, Zhu Qiang. He showed me a state funded Chinese journals database. Eight university libraries work together in developing this database. It had 300,000 entries at the time of my visit. I negotiated to set up a trial of the database for UC East Asian Librarians' group. The trial was set up for August and September. We are exploring the possibility of joining the project to gain access to this database.
One other inspiring project the Beijing University undertook is "Video on Demand". The user can watch the video of interest on the Internet. So far twenty-three videos on Chinese culture have been mounted. The videos contain lectures given by masters in the field and are produced by academic departments. The library converts them into digital format and makes them available on its Web site.
In each of the libraries we visited, I met with the head librarian and presented a copy of the gift exchange lists from UCSB. We have established successful gift exchange relations with several Chinese Universities, including Shanghai Fudan University and Nanjing University. I hope to expand the program to include libraries in North Eastern China, with the understanding that some of the libraries will need to receive more than give.
Overall, this was a very stimulating trip. I learned a lot about the new development of Chinese libraries, in addition to meeting colleagues in China and those in the delegation from across the States.
- Cathy Chiu
