|
| You are in: WCILCOS Papers |
| 2000 Conference Papers | |
|
Sheau-yueh Janey Chao
Abstract Professor Sheau-yueh Janey Chao, a librarian and Liaison for Asian Studies and Romance Languages at Newman Library, Baruch College, the City University of New York, has prepared a detailed description of the College, the Library, and her views and recommendations regarding the cooperation in overseas Chinese studies. The paper starts with a presentation of Baruch College, a highly competitive public college that includes the School of Business, School of Public Affairs, and School of Arts and Sciences, the establishment of its minor in Asian and Asian-American Studies, library's holdings on Chinese and Chinese cultural studies, the good percentage of Asian students population at Baruch, and career development activities both on campus and abroad. It continues with an introduction and description of the Newman library, its history, facilities, collection, staff members, and the means of disseminating library holdings through informational publications, campus-wide electronic mails, referrals by subject liaison, and an extensive BI program. At the heart of the paper are recommendations regarding the Cooperation in Overseas Chinese Studies. Professor Chao presents her views from the starting point of subject searching in OPAC looking for "See Also?references under the subject of LIBRARY COOPERATION which yields interesting results. Her recommendations regarding the topic include A. Coordinating organization/Chinese information center, B. Cooperation among the academic research libraries between the US and Chinese institutions, C. Cooperative bibliographic access through database searching, D. Website creation, E. Promoting scholarly communication through Listserv and joint conferences, and F. Regional/State/Institutional representatives. The paper ends with thoughts on implementation for these programs including setting up strict goal and objects followed by performance evaluation and needs assessments. Bernard M. Baruch College, The City University of New York Baruch College is a highly competitive public college that includes the largest School of Business in the United States, the only School of Public Affairs in the City University of New York, and an excellent School of Arts and Sciences. It is one of nine senior colleges of the City University of New York as well as one of the largest urban public universities in the nation with an average enrollment of nearly 15,000 students annually. In addition to offering a full range of undergraduate degree programs, Baruch offers master-level programs that include Business Administration, Public Administration, Business Journalism, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and Educational Administration. The recent establishment of an undergraduate minor in Asian and Asian-American Studies reflects the college's mission to prepare students to participate fully as professional and civic members of a diverse society. This program incorporates courses from a wide spectrum of disciplines and perspectives, including 14 courses with modules pertaining to China . Baruch College is committed to the development of this curriculum, which will have a strong Chinese studies component. The library holds more than 415,000 volumes with over 25,000 volumes pertain to Chinese or Chinese cultural studies. To support these courses the library aims to build a core collection of books in Chinese history, culture, politics, and business that will be extended through ongoing acquisitions. Building such a collection will not only support and reflect the cultural backgrounds and interests of the college's diverse student population but also strengthen the ongoing commitment of the college's mission for a comprehensive Asian and Asian-American Studies program at Baruch. The fall 1998 enrollment data listed approximately 2,800 students or nearly 25% of the student body as reporting Asian or pacific Island heritage on their admission applications. Students of Chinese descent comprise a significant portion of this number and the undergraduate students?Chinese Students Club, Taiwan Students Club, and Hong Kong Students Club are active social and cultural organizations on campus. Baruch College ranks first among master's degree granting institutions in the United States in terms of the proportion of international students comprising the total student population. To aid in the recruitment of international students and assist with their orientation to the campus, the Newman Library has created a multimedia "virtual tour?of the library in eight languages including Chinese. The tour is being field test at this time and will be added to the Newman Library Web site in fall 2000. To further prepare students for careers in the global market place, and to link the worlds of academia and international business, Baruch established the Weissman Center for International Business. The Center offers internships, study-abroad opportunities, and many sponsored events each semester. One popular event is the Mitsui Lunch-time Forums, which focused on a series of lectures with invited speakers of leading Asian educators, government officials, and corporate leaders discussing financial situations, business trends, and comparative analysis among major Asian countries including China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. The William and Anita Newman Library Originally named Baruch College library, the William and Anita Newman Library was dedicated to Mr. and Mrs. Newman for their generous contribution of several millions of dollars towards the building of a brand new library information center at Baruch. The building was dedicated on May 19, 1994 after an extensive, award-winning renovation designed by Davis Brody Bond LLP. It was originally constructed in 1894 for the Metropolitan Street Railway Company of New York, then taken over by the Lexington Company, and served as a power station for the City's cable car system. The re-design has received several numerous awards including a Library Buildings Award presented by the Library Administration and Management Section of the American Library Association. The Library is a part of the Library and Technology Center, which also houses a campus computing center, a conference center, and several administrative offices of the College. It has a seating capacity of 1,450. There are 22 faculty study rooms, as well as 36 graduate student carrels and 12 group study rooms. More than 100 PC workstations are available to access the Internet and the library's collection of electronic resources. There are two electronic classrooms and a computer laboratory to support the library's bibliographic instruction programs. The collection of Newman Library consists of over 415,000 volumes, 3,500 current serials subscriptions, 2 million microforms, and close to 1,000 audiovisual units, including films, videos, audio recording, and multimedia CD-ROMs. The vast majority of these purchased materials are selected to support the undergraduate and graduate curriculum including a core collection Chinese studies materials to support the recently added undergraduate minor in Asian and Asian-American Studies at Baruch. The staff of Newman Library contains 23 librarians, 29 administrative staff, and 16 student assistants. Nearly 43% of the librarians are either Asians or other minority groups including 3 Chinese and 7 Blacks or Hispanics. The ethnic profile symbolizes the library's commitment to serve a wide spectrum of international students from diversified cultures and multilingual communities including a large population of Chinese students from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Dissemination of information on library holdings at Baruch Within the college, the library's collections are promoted through informational publications, campus-wide electronic mail alerts, referrals by subject liaisons, and an extensive bibliographic instruction program. Special subject collections such as the recent donation of over 200 books from Brooklyn College Library of a collection acquired from Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center (a Subsidiary of the Association for Asian Studies in Taipei, Taiwan) will be listed in the OCLC international bibliographic database as well as highlighted on the library's website (http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu). Since Baruch College is a part of the City University of New York (CUNY), its library collections are listed in a shared Internet-accessible catalog searchable by the general public and are also included in OCLC. The collections are available on-site to over 200,000 CUNY students and faculty, as well as to the general public through consortium access agreements with public, academic and special libraries. The library actively shares its resources with other libraries and is an active participant in OCLC interlibrary loan networks. Recommendations regarding the Cooperation in Overseas Chinese Studies Introduction Being the departmental liaison and subject bibliographer for Asian studies and an avid scholar in the field of Asian studies, it is such a great pleasure to be here and have this opportunity to join the discussions with so many experts from all over the world. I'd like to offer some suggestions and share my thoughts with you. A recent subject search in CUNY+ (the City University of New York's online public access catalog, OPAC system) Catalog yields some interesting "See Also?references in the following: S=LIBRARY COOPERATION
The entry of "Bibliographic Centers?was listed as the number one "See Also?reference. Naturally, building a bibliographical center such as the Dr. You-Bao Shao Overseas Chinese Documentation and Research Center will be the first step leading towards the goal of global library cooperation in the 21st century. As we examine line by line each of the subjects under LIBRARY COOPERATION, there are many ways that the goal would be achieved through cooperative cataloging, centralized processing, cooperative acquisition of library materials, exchange of bibliographic information, interlibrary loans, library information networks, library storage centers, and much more. The essentials of cooperation and/or coordination Neither cooperation nor coordination
among institutes and libraries was a new concept in any field of subject
research. Numerous articles and publications have been published regarding
the resource sharing of Chinese language collections. For example, Tam's
"Resource sharing for Chinese language materials ?and Yang's "Establishing
the National bibliographic Information Network in Taiwan. ?If we apply
the word "cooperation? in the sense of working together, then the current
effort might be characterized as "structural coordination.?It is a new
kind of cooperative endeavor or service to build the structures for coordinated
action .
A. Coordinating organization/Chinese information center- In the article that I published in Urban Academic Librarian entitled: Chinese Information and Culture Center: New York's Gateway to Chinese Studies , the Center's location, physical components, library collection, subject strength, collection development policy, shared cataloging, and library access are detailed. Many of the library features could be used as examples for building such a coordinating organization. (The article will be attached to this paper for the Conference participants.) B. Cooperation among the academic research libraries between the U. S. and Chinese institutions- The preservation of Chinese historical resources published from 1932 to 1945- the years leading to and including the Sino-Japanese War has recently been completed and the full description of the microfilming project was published in Asian Libraries . The collection includes more than 3,700 titles in literature, history, philosophy, law, economics, popular culture and society. It is especially strong in regional and local materials, collections that many U.S. libraries are trying to build. Projects similar to this will greatly enhance the Chinese scholarship and subject strength of Overseas Chinese Studies. C. Cooperative bibliographic access through database searching- A shared bibliographic database that contains lists of Chinese Government organizations, U.S. Government organizations, Chinese academic organizations, educational associations, non-profit cultural centers, university programs, research institutions, libraries, museums, research foundations, and academic societies plus a directory of international scholars on Asian studies should be compiled in either electronic or printed form . Under the current technological environment, the creation of a website that collates all the necessary information, including the Center's mission, services, resources, a directory of scholars, and the announcement of activities and conferences, etc. is the most compelling approach for assessing these goals and functions (see item D for Website creation). Many of the current directories of scholars could be used as the basis to form such a directory. The International Directory of Scholars and Specialists in Third World Studies by James Duffy (Los Angeles, CA: Crossroads Press, 1981), Directory of American Scholars (4 vols. New York: Bowker, 1982 and 5 vols. Detroit, MI: Gale Group, 1999), and International Scholars Directory, Strasbourg, France: International Scholarly Publishers, 1973 are just some of the best directories offered in the publishing industry that are searchable by subject for a list of scholars in the field. D. Website creation- A Website should be created and regularly maintained that includes the highlights of current activities and programs, links to library resources that owned by international academic institutions, and other information resources or announcements such as the availability of grants, scholarships, joint institutional or international projects, workshops, and conferences. E. Promoting scholarly communications through Listserv and joint conferences- The establishment of a Listserv mailing list similar to the existing one belonging to the Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA, <cala@csd.uwm.edu>) with mission & goals, membership meetings, announcements, newsletters, and news of local chapters will greatly enhance the awareness and publicity of "Overseas Chinese Studies.?In the future, the Listserv will be able to facilitate the offering of joint conferences through electronic means of communication worldwide. F. Regional/State/Institutional representatives- To facilitate the exchange of ideas and update on current research studies, activities and publications, the election of representatives from various institutions as members of a state-level advisory group is necessary. An elected state representative will then report to the Overseas Chinese Documentation and Research Center for news to be updated on its Listserv and website to be shared with the international community of scholars, research institutions, and libraries. Implementation The implementation stage should be done step-by-step with strict goals and objectives followed by performance evaluation and needs assessments. In order to promote international cooperation on identifying and implementing cooperative projects, the Center will act as a channel between institutions or between institutions and scholarly communities. To assume such a leading role, a lot of efforts should be done on marketing and publicity of the Center as well as its services and resources. Recommendations such as the items A to E mentioned above are offering a venue for the implementation of such goals and objectives. | |
|