CEAL Executive Committee Meeting Minutes

Meeting II:  held from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. Friday March 10, 2000 at the Town and Country Resort and Convention Center, San Diego.

Present: Hsi-chu Bolick (University of North Carolina), Fred Brady (University of Utah), Rob Britt (Washington Law), Cathy Chiu (UC Santa Barbara), Joy Kim (USC), Gail King (Brigham Young), Wen-ling Liu (Indiana), Bill McCloy (Washington Law) [President], Hideyuki Morimoto (UC Berkeley), Kenji Nikki (Michigan), Sachie Noguchi (Pittsburgh), Doris Seely (Minnesota), Anna U (Toronto), Ai-Hwa Wu (Arizona State), Abraham Yu (UC Irvine), Yuan Zhou (Chicago).

WORKSHOPS

The Committee approved planning for two workshops: The Committee on Japanese Materials will plan a workshop for 2002, either alone or in conjunction with the Committee on Technical Processing and/or the Committee on Chinese Materials. The Committee on Korean Materials will try to arrange a one day workshop on basics in 2001 and a half-day advanced workshop in 2002.

COMMITTEE NAMES

Joy Kim raised a question about official names for committees (e.g. Committee on Korean Materials, Korean Materials Committee, etc.). There appear to be no "official" names. The issue will be further explored by Joy, working with the chairs of the committees.

STATISTICS

Members serving on the Statistics Task Force were appointed for a 3-year term by the Executive Committee. Vickie Fu Doll and Fung-yin Simpson want to put the CEAL statistics online as a searchable database. An editor is needed and a permanent statistics subcommittee or working group should be appointed. The ARL already has online statistics and could help us, but would charge too much.

BYLAWS

The CEAL Procedures, which constitute the bylaws, are very general in nature and haven't been updated to say anything about the specific duties of the President, Secretary, and Treasurer, for one example. McCloy will appoint a task force to update them. They should also be posted on the CEAL website, which is being taken over by the Committee on Library Technology.

RELATIONS WITH VENDORS

Anna U is interested in initiatives for the new millennium, which would be designed to encourage East Asian vendors to make their products more accessible and easier and cheaper to use. Many Asian CD's are hard to network, for example. Many products work only with Chinese, Japanese, or Korean; we need CJK products. NCC proposes library cooperation for joint licensing agreements, but vendors are perceived as being resistant. Anna U will head a task force to look into such issues.

CEAL CORRESPONDENCE

Morimoto asked who should write letters for CEAL. On matters of special interest to one committee, such as the closing of the Japan Documentation Center or NACSIS hours, should the committee chair write the letters, or should the CEAL President write them? McCloy indicated that sometimes it might be appropriate for letters to come from the committee, from the CEAL president, or from both sources. He noted his willingness to write such letters but said he may sometimes ask the committee chair for a draft letter. He apologized for sometimes not getting such letters out in a timely fashion and asked that the committee chairs remind him when he gets behind in correspondence.

E-HELP DESK FOR SCHOLARS

King discussed the need for an e-help desk for East Asian scholars, especially those living and working in areas where no East Asian collection is available. She was asked to look into this and report back to the Executive Committee with her findings.

Chiu mentioned that the Committee on Public Services has a link on its website to AskAsia, an Asian information center for K-12. Perhaps we should have something similar for scholars. We already have many people coming to our websites with reference questions.

AGENDA ITEMS NOT DISCUSSED DUE TO LACK OF TIME

1) Rotation of committee meeting times

2) The possibility of having a Membership Committee

3) Should the Journal on East Asian Libraries (JEAL) be a refereed journal?

Submitted by Doris Seely [additions and corrections by Executive Committee]