Kana Jenkins (she/her/hers) is the Curator of Gordon W. Prange Collection and East Asian Studies Librarian at the University of Maryland Libraries. She has been in the Curator/East Asian Studies Librarian position since 2019.
How did your journey in working with East Asian libraries and collections begin?
In 2010, I started working as Coordinator at Gordon W. Prange Collection. I didn’t know much about library science, but I fell in love with this career path. In 2015, I started the Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program at the University of Maryland while working at the Prange Collection full-time, and received the degree in 2020. I became Curator of the Prange Collection in 2019.
What did you enjoy most about your career in East Asian librarianship?
I enjoy the teaching aspect of the librarianship the most. Each session is so rewarding as I can first-handedly see the students’ reactions when interacting with original archival materials. Students often ask genuine and thought-provoking questions, so I love that challenging aspect of teaching too. I also cherish the opportunities to collaborate with my faculty members to come up with new and innovative ways of bringing the Prange Collection/UMD Libraries into their curricula.
What did you regard as your achievements/accomplishments in the field?
I think one of my best accomplishments so far is that I have maintained consistency in my workplace, particularly in the area of our digitization project with the National Diet Library of Japan. The project aims to digitize our entire book collection, which is over 70,000 titles. We started in 2005, and we are celebrating our 20th anniversary this year, with 40% of books now digitized. So this international project was launched before I started working here, and will most likely continue after I leave. Thus, I find my job is to keep all the documentation and metadata information as consistent and clear as possible and pass them on to the next generation in good order. I recognize that it may not sound as glamorous as producing tens of peer-reviewed journal articles or conducting a national-scale exhibition. However, I consider my involvement in this project as living proof that an archivist works for the next generation and for the long-term preservation of materials.
Another contribution that I may list relates to a unique condition of my “dual appointment” as special collection’s curator and as a subject librarian at the University of Maryland Libraries. I operate between two realms of librarianship. Through the lens of a special collection’s archivist, I think I have been able to share with the East Asian Studies librarians field some practical ideas on how to make East Asian Studies archival materials discoverable and more accessible to users, and how individual institutions can actively promote their use in support of the academic endeavors of their faculty members and students.
What change(s) and trend(s) in East Asian librarianship had you witnessed and envisioned?
Making items discoverable and accessible through digitization is one of the trends in East Asian librarianship that I have witnessed in the past decade. Many librarians and archivists are actively working on the digitization of the materials in their institutions, and a great deal of thought has been put into this effort through the use of standardized protocols for digitized images as well as metadata creation schemas.
I also acknowledge several attempts by my fellow East Asian Studies librarians and specialists to make these digitized collections (as well as physical collections) further discoverable in a larger-scale, outside of East Asian Studies field. I’m particularly impressed with the database of Digital Collections of Chinese Studies as well as the dashboard of Notable Japanese Collections in North America. Both platforms are wonderful resources for promoting and for encouraging the discovery/use of spread-out (and often “hidden”) collections in various institutions. Through my colleagues at the University of Maryland Libraries, I recently have been introduced to Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC), an online resource to connect archival collections across the world through biographical and historical information of individuals. I created a few entries in SNAC for donated collections within the Prange Collection, and plan to further engage with this initiative in the coming years.
Tell us about your favorite book or series:
When I was little, I had Japanese translations of My Father’s Dragon series. I was fascinated, especially with its detailed illustrated maps on the endpaper. I then had forgotten about them until I was doing book shopping for my own kids. I bought the Japanese translations as well as their English originals, and I felt so nostalgic that I teared up while reading them to my kids for the first time.
Tell us some fun facts about you:
I love gardening – particularly vegetable gardening! Every year, I plant Asian/Japanese vegetables, such as mustard greens (水菜), Chinese garlic chives (ニラ), shiso (紫蘇), and turnips (蕪). I also have a big fig tree, which produces more figs than I can ever consume. I feel very fortunate to have a good-size garden in my backyard and have fresh vegetables at hand throughout the year.
