Council on East Asian Libraries

Association for Asian Studies

 

 PLENARY SESSION

Wednesday, March 3, 2004

1:10 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, Garden Salon 1

San Diego, CA

 

Minutes

 

I.  Welcome and Introductory Remarks

 

President Abraham J. Yu opened the meeting by welcoming 180 attendees, many of whom came from overseas.   He then introduced a new acronym for CEAL describing its roles and missions: Commit, Equip, Assist, and Link. 

 

II.  Election Results

 

Amy Tsiang, Chair of this year’s Nominating Committee, introduced the Committee members:  David Hickey and Kris Troost.  CEAL’s first online election was a big success, thanks to the hard work of Wooseob Jeong (programming), Sarah Elman (membership list), and Joy Kim (announcements and archiving).  Of 169 members in good standing (those who hold membership for both AAS and CEAL) who received the electronic ballot, 101 returned their votes, a 60% return rate.  Winners are:

Vice President/President Elect:  Philip Melzer (Library of Congress)

Membership Committee Chair:  Jim Cheng (University of California, San Diego)

Member-at-Large:  Ellen Hammond (Yale University)

Member-at-Large with Korea Focus: Sun-yoon Lee (University of Southern California)

 

III.  CEAL Treasurer’s Report

 

Sarah Elman reported that as of February 25, 2004, the CEAL account held $15,252.11, a net increase of $1,737.43 over the previous year.  The full report is available at http://www.supervoca.co.kr/CEAL2004/Plenary/financial.htm .

 

IV.  Report from the Library of Congress

 


Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee, Asian Division (AD) Chief, reported on the Division activities.  As part of the five-year strategic plan, the AD is in the process of reorganization, which now has five Area Collection Teams: China and Mongolia, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. Collections in Asian languages continue to grow at a rapid pace, as shown by the latest statistics: there are more than 2.5 million volumes in LC’s Asian collections. Of these, 1.1 million are in the Japanese collection, 900,000 are in the Chinese and Mongolian collection, 210,000 are in the Korean collection, and 350,000 are in the South and Southeast Asian collections.

 

Personnel:  the Division has added six new professionals, one each for China, Japan, and South Asia and two for Southeast Asia, plus its first Information Technology Specialist.  Ms. Yoko Akiba of Japan Area Team passed away on February 10 after suffering from cancer.

 

Chinese Area: Henry Luce Foundation gave a three-year grant for the Chinese Area Team, to experiment with a new acquisition model in order to acquire many hard-to-obtain publications in six major regions of China.  In this model, designed to compensate for the deficiencies in vendor supplied lists, local scholars/researchers will provide lists of important publications in their respective regions.  

A day-long symposium was held to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Chinese Literature Division in the Library of Congress. 

The highly visible Naxi Pictographic Manuscripts Project was completed successfully.  With a grant from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation,  Professor Zhu Baotian of the Yunnan Provincial Museum reviewed and compiled an annotated catalog of the 3,337 Naxi manuscripts for digitization. LC anticipates that the entire project will be accessible online in the next six to nine months.

Dr. Wiens and Dr. Lee traveled Taiwan last month, discussing prospective projects such as the digitization of the Library’s European map and atlas collections of pre-modern China and accessing Chinese electronic databases.  They visited several rare book vaults in preparation for the future improvement of the Asian Division’s vault.

 

Japanese Area: Dr. Lee became a member of the North American Coordinating Council for Japanese Library Resources.  In November 2003, Dr. Lee spoke at the one-day symposium, “New Horizon of Library Services: Toward the Better Understanding of Asia,”  held at the Kansai-kan of the National Diet Library.

 

In the spring of 2001, the famous “Inoh Maps” – the first modern maps of Japan, created originally by Tadataka Inoh between 1800 and 1821 – were discovered in the Library’s map collection.  The collection holds 207 of the Inoh’s original 214 sheets in large-scale set (1:36,000), which represent the Japanese archipelago from Hokkaido to Kyushu.  The discovery has caused great excitement in Japan. All of the maps have been digitized and sent to the Japan Map Center for exhibition and online access. Actual-size reproductions of selected maps were exhibited at the Tokyo National Museum from October 31- December 14, 2003. Some of the original maps will also be loaned for exhibit in Kobe, Sendai, Atami, and Nagoya in 2004.

 

Korean Area: During the National Book Festival on October 4, 2003, Sonya Lee, Coordinator of the Korea Area Team, organized a major presentation on the art of traditional Korean papermaking, wood block printing, and big brush calligraphy.   For the program, Sonya successfully obtained support from the Minister of Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Mayor of the City of Cheonju, and the Korean Ambassador in D.C. In addition, a fascinating fashion show featured costumes made with Korean paper.

 


Other: As a part of its outreach program, the Asian Division has established the Friends Society in January 2004, with Dr. Frank Joseph Shulman as President and Dr. Jeremy Wu as Vice-President. CEAL members were encouraged to join the Society or visit the Web site at http://www.lcasianfriends.org.  

 

Dr. Lee’s full report is available at http://www.sois.uwm.edu/jeong/ceal/CEAL2004/Plenary/lc.htm

 

V.  Honoring Retirees and Those Who Came Before Us

 

A. Announcement of Retirees

 

The following retirees were honored: Karl Lo (from UCSD), Wen Kai Kung (Yale), Mitsuko Inchinose (Yale), Mihoko Miki (Columbia), Annie Chang (UCB), Midori Oyama (Harvard Yenching), Pao-liang Chu (Harvard Yenching), Chia-Yaung Hu (Harvard Yenching). 

 

B. Tribute to Departed Colleagues and Friends

 

Tributes were paid to the following deceased colleagues: Raymond Tang (UCB), Takayasu Miyakawa (Mitsubishi Research Institute, Japan), and Yoko Akiba (LC).

 

VI.  VEAL and the Tiger: a Few Comments on Digital Library

 

Karl Lo gave an inspiring talk on Digital Library.  Jaded by the enormous successes in bibliographic control during the 20th century, American librarianship has boxed itself into a title-page machine that consumes most of the library budget and energy.  In the meantime, commercial firms are spending billions and billions of dollars to build innovative web-based multilingual and multimedia technologies.  Not only are commercial search engines more powerful and flexible, but they also challenge the traditional concepts of literacy and authorship, as well as the traditional approaches to primary education.   To be responsive in the new era, libraries must redirect some of their efforts from processing of title pages and pool their resources for innovations and cost-effectiveness.  The slides of his presentation are available at: http://supervoca.co.kr/CEAL2004/Plenary/TIGER.ppt .

 

VI.  KLA Report on the Planning of the 72nd (2006) IFLA in Seoul

 

Do-Mi Kim of KLA gave a presentation to introduce the site of the 2006 IFLA.  With lavish booklets showcasing the superb conference facilities, cultural sites and programs, the KLA representative promised a highly rewarding experience at Seoul IFLA in 2006.   CEAL members were urged to plan ahead to attend.   The slides of her presentation are available at: http://supervoca.co.kr/CEAL2004/Plenary/IFLA.htm

 

VII.  Global Resources Network (GRN)

 


Eudora Loh, Co-Director of ARL Global Resources Network, reported on the joint initiative of AAU and ARL, launched in 1994 to develop cooperative strategies to address growing universe of scholarly international resources.  Project activities include cooperative collection development and licensing, digitization, bibliographic control for access, and promotion of collaboration among constituents.  The network currently has 6 projects, including a “Japan Project”. The slides of her presentation are available at: http://supervoca.co.kr/CEAL2004/Plenary/GRN.ppt

 

VIII.  Remarks by the President of the Association for Asian Studies

 

AAS President Woody Watson briefly addressed to CEAL membership.  He expressed his pleasant surprise at the size of CEAL attendance.  He welcomes comments on issues of interest to CEAL.  He can be reached by email at: jwatson@wjh.harvard.edu

 

IX.  Introduction of the Executive Board and its Projects

 

A. Executive Board Members

 

Abraham J. Yu introduced and thanked current and newly elected Executive Board members.  He thanked the outgoing members and acknowledged their contributions: Bill McCloy served as CEAL President for 5 years, including the years he had to fill because of  a vacancy; David Hickey drafted the CEAL Bylaws revisions.  Vickie Doll completed her term as a Member-at-Large, but will stay as the Chair of the Statistics Committee. The current roster of EB members is as follows: (http://www.sois.uwm.edu/jeong/ceal/CEALExecComm/CEALExecutiveCommittee.htm ):  

 

OFFICERS 

COMMITTEE CHAIRS

MEMBERS AT LARGE

 

Abraham J. Yu

(President, 2003-2006)

University of California, Irvine.

ajyu@uci.edu 

Karen Wei

(Chinese Materials, 2002-2005)

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

kwei@uiuc.edu 

Robert Felsing

(2003-2006)

University of Oregon

felsing@oregon.uoregon.edu

 

Philip Melzer

(Vice-President/President-Elect, 2004-2006)

Library of Congress

pmel@loc.gov 

 

Kuniko Yamada McVey

(Japanese Materials, 2002-2005)

Harvard University

kmcvey@fas.harvard.edu

Kristina Troost

(2003-2006)

Duke University

kktroost@acpub.duke.edu

 

 

Joy Kim

(Secretary, 2003-2006)

University of Southern California

joykim@usc.edu 

 

Hyokyoung Yi

 (Korean Materials, 2002-2005)

University of Washington

hkyi@u.washington.edu 

Zhijia Shen

(2002-2005)

University of Colorado

shen@spot.colorado.edu

 

 

Sarah Elman

(Treasurer, 2003-2006)

Yale University

Sarah.elman@yale.edu 

 

Wooseob Jeong

(Library Technology, 2002-2005)

University of WisconsinMilwaukee

wjj8612@uwm.edu 

 

Amy Tsiang

(2002-2005)

University  of California, Los Angeles

ctsiang@library.ucla.edu 


 

 

 

Gail King

(Publications, 1996-2006)

Brigham Young University

gail_king@byu.edu

 

 

Ellen Hammond

(2004-2007)

Yale University

ellen.hammond@yale.edu 

 

 

Sharon Domier

(Public Services, 2002-2005) 

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

sdomier@library.umass.edu

Sun-Yoon Lee

(2004-2007)

University of Southern California

sunyoonl@usc.edu 

 

 

Hideyuki Morimoto

(Technical Processing, 2002-2005)

Columbia University

hm2106@columbia.edu 

 

 

 

Vickie Fu Doll  

(Statistics, 2001-2006)

University of Kansas

vdoll@ku.edu

 

 

 

Jim Cheng

(Membership, 2004-2007

University of California, San Diego

jicheng@library.ucsd.edu

 

 

B.  JEAL as a Refereed Journal

 

Abraham Yu reported that Gail King will chair a task force to study the issue of making JEAL a Refereed Journal.  The Task Force members are: Thomas Hahn, Robert Felsing, Alban Kojima, and Joy Kim.  Gail will send out a survey in the near future to poll the opinion of the CEAL membership.  

 

C.  Comprehensive Review of the LCSH and the NAR Related to East Asian Headings

 

Abraham also reported that the Executive Board asked Hideyuki Morimoto to chair a task force to study issues in conducting a comprehensive review of East Asian-related LCSH and name authority headings.  The idea had been suggested originally by Eugene Wu and Tai Loi Ma. 

 

X.  Announcement: CEAL Fellowship Dinner

 

Jim Cheng announced that the CEAL Fellowship Dinner will take place at the Todai Buffet Restaurant.  UCSD will provide transportation to those who made reservations for the bus.

 

(Recorded and respectfully submitted by:  Joy Kim, Secretary)