TRAINING TO MEET THE DIGITAL CHALLENGE:
Post-curriculum Field Trip to China
October 16-24, 2008

As part of the Summer Institute on Chinese Studies Librarianship in the Electronic Environment, which took place at the University of Washington in Seattle in the summer of 2008 (hereafter referred as the Summer Institute), a post-curriculum field trip to Beijing and Shanghai took place between October 16 and 24, 2008.  The goal was to further expand the learning experience of the Summer Institute and enhance the knowledge of the participating librarians about the libraries services, database developments, and book publishing in China.  The field trip was optional and participants were responsible for their own expenses. The Delegation of Chinese Studies Librarians from North American was formed for the trip. Eighteen librarians joined the Delegation and led by the members of the Taskforce Committee consisting Su Chen, Amy Tsiang, Dianna Xu, and Kuang-tien Yao.

In Beijing, from October 16 to October 21, the delegation visited major libraries, including National Library of China, Beijing University Library, National Science Library, Library of the Central Nationalities University, People University Library, China Film Archives and several major database providers, and book vendors. In Shanghai, from October 22 to October 24, eleven members of the delegation visited Fudan University Library and Shanghai Library. The Delegation’s visits to major libraries were publicized widely as headlines on several libraries’ websites, including National Library of China, the People University, and Shanghai Library.

While in Beijing, on October 18, 2008, the Delegation participated in the Conference, “International Forum of Chinese Database: Perspectives on Collection Development and Usage,” to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Information Center for Social Sciences of People University of China. The members of the delegation organized a panel at this conference of more than 200 attendees. The panel was well received and made to the website headlines of the People University.

The Post-curriculum Field Trip was heavily scheduled with daily visits and activities, including meetings and discussions with librarians, database providers, and book vendors. Each day, the Delegation began the visit as early as 8:15 a.m. and ended it around 9 p.m. at night. Although the schedules were hectic and exhausting, all participants felt that they gained knowledge or new information from each visit. The participants have agreed that the Post-curriculum Field Trip is a necessary part of the professional training for the Chinese Studies librarians because it has provided rare opportunities for them to advance their understandings of and networking with the libraries in China.

The following journal of the field trip was compiled from daily notes taken by participants.

Friday, October 17, 2008
Beijing
By MA Bie-Hua

China Film Archive (中国电影资料馆)  &
China Film Art Research Center (中国电影艺术研究中心)

Dong Liu (刘东处长), Director of International Cooperation Division, greeted the team.

电影 = Film, 2001-
中国电影周报 = Chinese film news, 1988-
当代电影 = Contemporary Cinema, 1984- (more theoretical)
中国电影资料馆馆刊

Cinema features: Introduced by Manager Zhao

Film Library (电影图书馆) intro. by Ms. Xianghui Sun (孙向辉), vice director of the Film Library, and Mr. Tongsheng Zhao (赵童生), Assistant Head

Visited the Physical Archives

It was very precious to see the Scripts Archive Room, Film Archive Room, Serial Room, and Repair Center where two technicians were restoring the first color movie in China, Butterfly Lovers (梁山伯与祝英台) and 龙须沟 (Dragon beard ditch) produced in 1950s. The common problems are fading and molding, which usually takes two months to finish repairing since it needs to be repaired pixel by pixel.         

Lunch at Kang long tai zi (亢龙太子酒轩 010-62695777, Hubei style)
Impressive menus: 

APABI

CIBTC Processing Station and Warehouse introduced mostly by Tong Wang (汪彤)
CIBTC stands for China International Book Trading Corporation (中国国际图书贸易总公司).
International Division size: 4800 m2
Receiving and sending

Packing (包装区)
Each customer/library is assigned a shelf for unpacked materials and an area for packed boxes; business opens all year round except for 2 holidays
Cataloging

Binding
After cataloging, the books will go to binding. Otherwise, they will go to sending/shipping. In general, an order will arrive at the shipping address by water around 50 days if it includes cataloging and binding.
Warehouse of inventory

International Bookstore (国际书店): about the same size as the international one.
This department deals with domestic business. It has divisions of receiving, check in, distributing (by patron), copy and descriptive Cataloging, processing, subject cataloging, etc.
Others:

Dinner at Glory Hymn Restaurant (凯瑞豪门食府010-88495185, Shanxi Style)

 

October 19, 2008
Beijing
By JIANG Shuyong

the group went to see the National Stadium (国家体育场) or the "Bird's Nest" (鸟巢)” situated in the Olympic Green. The place, with the dragon-shape buildings at a distance, “Water Cube” nearby and the “Birds’ Nest” standing at the center, is breathtakingly beautiful.  The group had a chance to go inside the stadium and on-looked some sports event happened to be held in the stadium.  They certainly felt the Olympic spirit.

After visiting the Olympic Green, the group was divided into smaller groups, and some members went to shopping and lunching at a small restaurant for congee.  Having been fed with banquet food for days, the simple but tasty congee just serviced them right.  A few members went for a special mission-- visiting a private collection specialized in Chinese porcelains.  Luckily they met with the museum owner and the famous TV show host, Wang Gang, and snapped a picture with them.

In the evening, the group rejoined its leader, Ms. Kuang-tien Yao, and gathered at the Beijing Rare Book Company office. Everyone enjoyed Mr. LIU Jun’s interesting stories about him and his company.

It is a much needed relaxing and fun day for the group after many days of intensive meetings.

 

October 20, 2008
Beijing
By LIU Jing

Monday morning, we were greeted by Mr. Ke and Mr. An at the main entrance of Tsing Hua U. Ms. Zhou Mengzhi, who is in charge of the legal department, presented the organizational chart of TTOD, the digital publishing platform of CNKI and its overseas market share. Among all types of institutional users, over 2,000 hospital libraries made up the largest group. CAJ and CJP are TTOD's major products so far followed by e-yearbooks. CNKI is one of the branches of American Tongfang with staff of 1,600. Mr. Ke reported that they have been working on the following areas after we met in July at the Summer Institute: Born digital resources, such as dissertations and conference proceedings; Integration of different formats; Value added services, such as authority control and tracking title changes, etc.

Mr. Dong Fei presented the Yearbook Database followed by the reference book database demo by Ms. Li Xiaohong. All presenters emphasized on the cross-database searching, but our group members worried how much we could afford, when such an integrated and large-scaled digital product is presented to our users who may request for the full-text that our library is not capable to subscribe to. I also worry the overlap among different e-content providers.

We started the afternoon meeting with Dr. Zhang Xiaolin at 2pm in the National Library of Science, which serves the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). CAS has 103 research institutes in 28 cities with 25,000 staff and 3,5000 graduate students. Dr. Zhang asked us to promote the plan of hiring 100 librarians worldwide and sending his staff to work at North American academic libraries. Their services impressed the group especially the cross-domain search system, real-time virtual reference and desktop infor-tools （e划通）, which is a desktop retrieval tool that allows searching the third party's or commercial databases from personal documents, such as pdf or ppt files. Since the average distance between the central library and users is 1,000 km, easy access and document delivery are emphasized. Dr. Zhang emphasized the interactive information services and looking for what the users don't know what exactly they need.

强调“去馆舍化，去层级化，提供研究人员还不知道的信息源。" Library's metadata has been provided to Google Scholar. The Chinese Science Citation Database has been integrated into the ISI Web of Knowledge, which will help to promote the Chinese scientific research worldwide.

The library tour after the meeting reminded us what Dr. Zhang said. The building is quiet and empty except for the first floor. We left the library and rushed to one of TTOD's processing centre where many young people work day and night to scan and process newspapers, journals and dissertations, etc. They work in different shifts to keep the scanners and computers running all the time. The group was impressed by their efficiency.

 

October 21, 2008
Beijing
by ZHONG Jing

We arrived in National Library of China (NLC) before 9:00 am. Zhan Furui, director of NLC and Yan Xiangdong, director of International Cooperation Division welcomed us. We then had a meeting in their conference room. Lu Haiyan, director of Legislative Decision Service Department, Wang Zhigeng, director of Digital Resource and Service Department, and some other staffs attended the meeting.   Director Zhan introduced the new building of NLC. NLC moved to the new building on September 9, which is the 99th anniversary of NLC.  The new building is 80,000 square meters. The government invested 1.2 billion. Among it, 0.5 billion will be spent on digital resources. The new building was designed by a German firm. The idea is to combine tradition with modern style. The opening of the new building has been improving the usage statistics. Services available now include e-check-in-and-check-out system, wireless connection within the library, library services on cell-phone, on-line seminar, on-line exhibition, e-books, etc. Right now, NLC has been working on collecting digital copyrights authorization in order to better serve the public. On the training part, they have been sending ten librarians to Library of Congress to study advanced technology and idea each year.

Lu Haiyan gave a presentation on the establishment and future development of Legislative Decision Service department. She hopes to have more interaction and cooperation on sinology and legislative studies with overseas China Studies Librarians. A copy of her presentation was given to each delegate.

Lu Shuping and Wang Zigeng are both from Digital Resource and Service Department. They did a presentation on NLC’s collection and resources. Some of the featured collections include: Oracle bones, Rubbings collection, New Year’s Pictures, Xixia materials, local chronicles, Minguo books, periodicals, and laws, doctoral dissertations, China studies e-resource, Duhuang collection. Minguo collection, dissertations, and local chronicles provide full-text search. They mentioned that their e-resources are open to the public, including the U.S. libraries.

After lunch, we visited Central University for Nationalities library. Li Ting, head of rare books gave us a tour on their rare book collection. Cui Lian, deputy director of the library toured us in their reading room for minority languages and foreign collection. After that, we visited their museum next door to the library. Zhou Qian, a student volunteer in the museum showed us ethnic clothing in the North and South region, minorities livings, and religious beliefs.

Around 4:00pm, we went to Institute of Scientific & Technological Information of China (ISTIC), where Wanfang data is located. Liu Dingfei welcomed us at the entrance. Jiang Yongxin, general manager of Wanfang introduced their company. According to him, Wanfang is a state-owned company. ISTIC is the biggest share holder. Wanfang is very strong in technology. A lot of Chinese ministries’ technical support has been provided by Wangfan. On electronic database, they are as competitive as Tongfang in terms of technology. Their market share is more in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau. Lu Dong, marketing director of Wanfang told us that branches have been set up all around China, e.g. Shanghai, Shenyang, Guangzhou, Wuahan, Xian and Hongkong, etc. Their overseas market has just begun to develop. On growth strength, the North America market is slower than Hong Kong. 

Xu Tong, deputy director of information center of the People’s daily did a presentation on People Daily’s electronic products, which include People's Daily (1946- ), The Database (Archives) of the Communist Party of China (CPC), The Database of the National Peoples Congress (NPC), The Database of the Chinese Peoples' Political and Consultative Conference (CPPCC), The Database of the Chinese Government, etc. Their future development is online subscription to e-newspapers. They will reduce free access to their online newspaper after that.

Liu Dingfei introduced his three colleagues: Mandy Hu, who did a presentation on Chinese Studies Online (CSO) database, Miao Yingna who presented their China Online Journals (COJ) product, and Jacky Wong who introduced their Chinese legal access (CLASS) database. Delegates asked various questions about their products after the presentations.

 

October 22-23,2008
Shanghai
By Stephen Qiao, Deng Shi, Ye Ding,
(Local transportation in Shanghai was provided by Shanghai Library)

Wednesday, Oct. 22

6:00 – 3:30:    The group of eleven people leaves Beijing for Shanghai:
Nine of them leave at 8:45 a.m.  via HU7605 and arrive at Shang Hongqiao airport. They are Xi Chen (陈晰), Shi Deng (邓石), David Hickey (许凯), Bie-Hwa Ma (马陈碧华), Stephen Qiao (乔晓勤),  Dianna Xu (许晔),  K.T. Yao (姚张光天),  Ding Ye (叶鼎),  and Jing Zhong (钟静),

Two of them leave at 11:30 a.m. via China Air 1557 and arrive at Shanghai Hongqiao airport. They are Amy V. Heinrich and Amy Tsiang （蒋吴庆芬）

Shu Xu(徐舒), Eric Qian (钱瞾飞), and Zhiping Xu (徐志平) (driver) from Shanghai Library(全国报刊索引中心, 上海图书馆) pick up the group and drop us at Nanying Hotel (上海南鹰饭店). They treat us lunch at the hotel.

3:30 – 6:00      Shu Xu, etc. take 11 of us to sightseeing Chenghuang Temple (城隍庙) and Yu Garden (豫园)

6:00 – 7:30      Dinner at Lu Bo Lang Restaurant (绿波廊酒家), a local well-known Shanghai cuisine restaurant,  with Jian Lu, director, Information Processing Center, Shanghai Library (陆健, 上海图书馆信息处理中心主任), Peijuan Wu, assistant  director, Information Processing Center, Shanghai Library (吴佩娟, 上海图书馆信息处理中心副主任), Chunlei Han, assistant director, Database R&D Dept., Information Processing Center, Shanghai Library (韩春磊, 上海图书馆信息处理中心数据库研究开发部副主任), Shu Xu, Eric Qian, and Zhiping Xu.

Thursday, Oct 23

7:00:    Breakfast at the NanYing Hotel

7:45:    Leave for visiting Fudan University Library

8:10 – 9:00:    Tour of Li Zhaoji Library, Jiangwan Campus, Fudan University (复旦大学江湾校区李兆基图书馆)
The new library just opened on Sept. 1, 2008. We are the first non-campus visitors they received. We are welcomed by Prof. Yaopeng Li, General party branch secretary/Library Associate Director (复旦大学图书馆党总支书记兼副馆长李尧鹏), prof. Zhaolu Wu, Library Associate Director (图书馆副馆长吴兆路博士), Ms. Li Zhu, director of Li Zhaoji Library (江湾馆馆长朱莉女士), and Ms. Le Wang (王乐女士). Ms. Zhu gives us tour to the library.

Fudan University Libraries have six locations/branches: Liberal Arts Library, Science Library, and Rare Book Collection at Guanghua lou located at Handan Campus (main campus) are part of Main Library (邯郸校区（本部本馆）的文科馆，理科馆， 及光华楼的古籍部); Medical Library located at Fenglin Campus (枫林校区的医科馆,原上海医科大学图书馆)；Zhangjiang Library at Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Campus (张江校区（高科技术区）的张江馆) and Li Zhaoji Library at Jiangwan Campus (江湾校区的李兆基图书馆).

The new library has five floors, 4 up the ground and one floor underground, total 19,600 square meters. It currently opens only the first floor and partial second floor to the faculty, students, and researchers of the Fudan University Law School (法学院)and the Laboratory of Advanced Materials (先进材料实验室). On the first floor, it has an compact shelving area, an  e-learning common, a  training center,  an open space lecture hall with stage, and an Ai’xin library (爱心书屋). The compact shelving area is open stacks and houses about 30,000 volumes of monographs which about over 10,000 volumes came from Law School Library (法学院资料室) and over 10,000 volumes from Main Library; The training room can be reserved by faculty and students in addition to the library training. It becomes very popular. The e-learning common has 93 seating stations with 45 PCs which allows students bring their own laptops. It will be wireless by the end of year according to campus plan.  The open space lecture hall can open to on-stage dance or other performances, concerts, and lectures. The Ai’xin library is nearby the main entrance and houses used books that the library encourages graduates donate to the library for their on campus students to read. Most books are for all kinds of exam preparation and for entertainment. All books are not added to the Library catalog and free to take out without check-in and check-out.  The library currently has 7 staff, 3 comes from the Law School Library after it became part of Li Zhaoji Library.

The new library is just completed its phase I plan. Later on, it will build collection, staff, and services for the School of Life Sciences (生命科学学院), Dept. of Environmental Science and Engineering (环境科学), the School of Social Development and Public Policy (社会学院), and the School of Arts (艺术学院, not founded yet) after these departments move to Jiangwan campus in next three years.

9:00 – 9:40      Meet with prof.  Jianxiong Ge, Fudan University Library Director (复旦大学图书馆馆长葛剑雄), prof. Ge Wu, director of Rare Book Collection at the Fudan University Library (古籍部主任吴格博士) and prof. Yaopeng Li, prof. Zhaolu Wu.

Before prof. Jianxiong Ge joins us, prof. Ge Wu mentioned that the Library took it very seriously for arranging our visit, and the plan was revised and updated at least five or six times. Prof. Ge is a social activist (社会活动家) and very busy. It hard to find him in person or by phone, but he can be reached by email no matter how busy he is and where he is worldwide.

Prof. Ge in his meeting with us, talked about the following several things:

9:40 – 10:00    Leave Jiangwan campus and drive to Handan campus to visit Rare Book Collection at Guanghua lou  and University History Museum, Handan Campus, Fudan University (复旦大学邯郸校区光华楼古籍部和校史馆)

10:00 – 10:40   Accompanied by prof. Yaopeng Li, we visit the Rare Book Collection located at Guanghua building (光华楼古籍部). Dr. Guanghui Yang (杨光辉博士) gives us the tour. This collection was just moved into Guanghua building this year and housed on the 4th and 5th floors of the building. So far it has 400,000 volumes of double leaves binding books including reprints, among them, close to 7,000 titles in total 60,000 volumes are published pre 1796. However, the rare book collection of western language materials are housed in the Liberty Arts Library including very old French collection came from St. John’s University as result of 1952 universities reorganization. Although the condition of the Rare Book Collection improved after moved into the Guanghua building, the building is an office building, using it for rare book collection has an issue of meeting the standard for preservation. Currently the department is working with campus to make improvement and meet the preservation standards.

10:40 – 11:40 Accompanied by prof. Yaopeng Li, we visit the University History Museum. It used to be the old University Library. There are big portraits of six important university presidents hang up at the entrance. They are Xiangbo Ma (马相伯), the founder  who served as president during 1905-06, 1910-12; Denghui Li(李登辉), who served during 1918-1947, and made significant contribution to the fundamental development of the University (有奠基作用); Wangdao Chen (陈道望), who served as the first president of new China during 1952-77; Buqing Su (苏步青), served during 1978-1978; Xide Xie (谢希德), who served during 1983-88, an MIT graduates who made significant contribution by bringing western together with Fudan University; Fuqing Yan (颜福庆), founder and president during 1927-41 of the former Shanghai Medical University (原上海医大校长) and made significant contribution in founding and developing Public Health in China.
The museum presents the history of Fudan University in chronological order via many pictures and historical items, including the 1909 graduate certificate with handwriting of Cixi, the Empress dowager of China (慈禧手谕), Zhongshan Sun’s hand writing of “Tian xia wei gong” (天下为公), also the university crest (badge) (校徽) designed by Denghui Li that has “Fudan” in center, circled by the University’s exhortation (校训) chosen from “Lun yu” also by Denghui Li: “博学而笃志, 切问而近思.”

11:40 – 1:30    Lunch at Shanghai fu xuan restaurant (上海复宣酒店/复旦新闻学院培训中心 ) with prof. Jianxiong Ge, prof. Ge Wu, prof. Yaopeng Li, etc.  as well as Judith Nadler, Library Director and Yuan Zhou,  Curator for the East Asian Collection from Chicago University library, who are also visiting Fudan University on the same day.

1:30 -- 2:00      Leave Fudan University for visiting Shanghai Book Traders (SBT)  (上海外文图书公司)

2:00 – 3:30      Meet with Xinhua Wu, president, Shanghai Book Traders (吴新华, 上海外文图书公司总经理), Bin Gu, vice president, Shanghai Book Traders (顾斌, 上海外文图书公司副总经理), Di Yang, export manager (杨棣, 上海外文图书公司出口经理), and Xiangrui Kong, sales executive, Import & Export Division, Shanghai Book Traders (孔祥瑞, 上海外文图书公司进出口部销售主管)

President Wu first thanks to the libraries who have been working with SBT, then gives introduction. SBT was formerly Foreign Language Bookstore (上海外文书店). It became Import & Export book traders in 1985. SBT started attending AAS Annual Conferences and providing book services to libraries since 2000 and gradually understand the needs of East Asian Libraries in North America. The company based in Shanghai and providing print publication published by Shanghai publishers and its neighbor area publishers (上海及其周边地区出版的图书), focus on publications on Southern China  such as local people’s congresses , development of village and township enterprises, local gazettes, yearbooks  (侧重南方书:  地方人大，乡镇企业发展， 地方方志年鉴). It is not limited to publication in English published by Chinese publishers like myth by some librarians. Its business of exporting Chinese scholar publication to East Asian Collection in North America continues to grow. Although mass digitization has impact on its business, the overall exporting is stable. No matter what kind of change or impact to North America’s East Asian Libraries, SBT is willing to help out and meet the library’s need (不管怎样变，内容需求是一致的；不管怎样变，公司都会帮助大家， 为大家提供服务。不管是有没有生意，公司都会为满足要求而努力。不管什么时间，欢迎大家来访！)

After each delegate introduce themselves and their library collection and their collection focuses, we have some discussion and suggestions regarding SBT’s services, such as notify libraries about unfilled orders if they were 6 months old. President Wu also realizes that SBT should publicize some services they have or partnering with other companies, such as serving as agent to purchase books online in China, performing duplicate checking against a library’s catalog ，and cataloging service, etc.  Mr. Xiangrui Kong also emphasizes the quality and accuracy of SBT’s monthly catalog and abstract. They put the monthly catalog together by not blindly taking ready data provided by other, but actually review the data and items, and make correction if necessary.

3:30 – 5:00     Delegates visit SBT’s bookstore and several nearby bookstores

5:00 – 7:30     Dinner at Wugong Restaurant with Mr. Bin Gu, Mr. Di Yang, and Mr. Xiangrui Kong.

7:30 – 8:30     Some delegates take walk tour to sightsee 外滩, 上海南京路步行街, and shopping.

Friday, October 24

8:30:                Leave Nanying Hotel to Shanghai Library

8:40 – 9:15:    Tour of Shanghai Library

9:15 – 9:40:     Meet with the deputy director of Shanghai Library Mr. He Yi (何毅) He give a brief introduction of Shanghai Library. The library was established in 1952 and moved to the current location in 1996 as Shanghai Library merged with the Institute of Science & Technical Information of Shanghai. Currently, the library has 800 staff, among them 142 have librarian and other professional titles, 10 of them received Ph.D. degree and 72 have masters. The library has over 88 branches or service locations all over Shanghai to offer “one card access” (一卡通) services to users through the system. The library also provides “ten recognizable services” (十大品牌) namely “National Index to Chinese Newspapers & Periodicals”, the Library Lecture Series, Special exhibitions, etc. 

The library has 33 reading rooms, 20 special study rooms, several auditoriums. The total collection of the library includes 50,000,000 pieces of items to be very unique in China. The book collection is about 3,700,000 volumes. Among them, there are manuscripts of famous politicians, business men and scholars, large collections of genealogical materials (342 surnames, 18,000 titles), comprehensive collections of journals and newspapers in the Republic periods, and rare Chinese and western language books. Some of these unique materials have been digitized. The target of the library: To be world class metropolitan library.

9:40 – 12:00: Visit National Index to Chinese Newspapers & Periodicals in Shanghai Library. The Director of the Information Processing Center Mr. Lu Jian (陆健) introduced the history and operation of the center.  National Index to Chinese Newspapers & Periodicals (NICNP) started operation in 1955. The digitization operation started from 1993. A short video provides some basic information about NICNP. There are four sections in NICNP: 1. Digitization section, 2. Audio/Visual production section, 3. Multimedia production section and 4. Indexing & Technical Services section. The digitization projects cover the unique Chinese rare books, genealogies, journals and newspapers in Republic period.

12:00 – 2:00: Lunch at “Xin nong cun fan zhuang (新农村饭庄)” restaurant in Shanghai Stadium to taste authentic Shanghai country style cuisine. The restaurant itself is also decorated in traditional Shanghai countryside style.

2:00 – 300:      Visit Xujiahui cang shu lou (徐家汇藏书楼)，Shanghai Library. Established by Societas Iesu, S.J., a school of Roman Catholics in 1847. The current building of two stories was built in 1897, in which 80,000 volumes of Western language books in Latin, French, English, German, etc. stored initially and the current holdings are about 560,000 volumes. The earliest materials include a philosophical work in Latin published in 1515, the earlist Morrison English-Chinese Dictionary, and complete collection of The North China Daily News 《字林西报》and its predecessor North China Herald《北华捷报》. The design of the second floor Western book stacks is copied from the design of Vatican Library. All the foreign language books cataloged here are following the rules of AACR2 and USMARC. The preservation and digitization facilities are on site with specialized large-size scanner imported from Germany.

3:00 – 4:00:    Continue the tour of Shanghai Library. Visited Chinese rare book reading room (古籍阅览区), Genealogy reading room (家谱阅览区), Chinese rare book preservation lab (古籍修复室)， Foreign periodical reading room (外文期刊室), and Friendship Library (友谊图书馆). The last one stores books Australia, United States, Japan and other countries through donation or exchange. There is a designated area for the repository of UN materials.    

4:00 – 5:30:    Discuss with the staff from the Acquisition & Cataloguing Department, Shanghai Library.  Deputy director Ji Silu (纪陆思) and Xu Tao (许涛) introduced the operation of the department. The total staff size is about 60 people in the department. 20 some are responsible for acquisition and cataloging Chinese materials. Same number of people are taking in charge acquisition and cataloguing foreign language materials. The rest of staff are dealing with acquisition and cataloging of serials, monograph series, exhibition preparation and other jobs. For Chinese cataloguing, they follow the rules of CNMARC and they can process the majority of 88,000 volumes of Chinese publications they received annually. AACR2 and USMARC have been adopted as rules for cataloging about 28,000 volumes of foreign language materials. They even accepted the out sourcing requests from institutions in the US and Singapore. Usually, the whole technical processing takes no more than two weeks from the dates of materials received by the library. The delegation members got chance to discuss cataloging related issues with colleagues in Shanghai Library.

5:30 – 7:30:    Dinner at Tu’an Xiewei Da Jiudian (图安蟹味大酒店Tu’an Restaurant specialized in crabs)

Last modified: Monday February 02 2009