Summer Institute for Chinese Studies Librarianship
I'm trying out this new microblogging site as a way to capture some of my experiences at this two-week program in Seattle: http://www.lib.washington.edu/East-Asia/institute/institute.html. Yesterday we had the first of the two-day preconference, called Symposium on CNKI Standards and Chinese E-Publishing. The packed program lasted from 8 AM till after 5 PM, and each presenter had far more content he/she wanted to deliver than time would allow, so sessions often went over. But the order of sessions was very well thought out, so the very stimulating day flew by. Basically, presentations by the creators of China's largest electronic journals database, Tongfang Knowledge Network Technology Group (TKN) , about the inner-workings and, most significantly, future plans for expansion of their product, alternated with commentary from the Chinese studies librarians of major US universities. The comments always led to extremely lively discussion. Some of the commentators were given access to a beta version of TKN's new platform ahead of time so that they could assess it. A major critique of the new platform was that the interface, even the initial search screen, was far too busy. This was particularly glaring at a time when most US databases are slimming down to an austere, one-search-box interface, at least for the primary view. I'm wary of labeling things as cultural differences, but this may be one. A Chinese person suggested to me yesterday that it may be an irrepressible desire to be comprehensive. This rings true not only of the database interface, but also of the PowerPoint presentations about it that we were shown. Many were filled with the equivalent of at least a page of text! A far cry from the rule of thumb one often hears about the need to limit bullet points to three to five and the text associated with each to fewer than ten words.
In the discussions, the librarians expressed a strong desire for TKN to let their database be indexed by Google for display in Google Scholar. We all know that despite our best efforts, students and faculty often start their searches at Google rather than at our library home pages. A study has shown that since JSTOR was indexed by Google, student use of its resources has increased signficantly. Ah, that explains why my patrons come to me saying they couldn't find something, the library must not have it because it's not in JSTOR!
Friends and colleagues know that the big personal story for me here is that unlike all of the other attendees, I am not a China specialist first and foremost and do not have the native or near-native fluency in the language of all the others. Yesterday's presentations were ALL in Chinese, and the talk did sound like it was going millions more miles per hour than any of the language tapes I listened to in preparation. But as I anticipated, the study of Chinese that I have had and my knowledge of characters from decades of studying Japanese meant that I could follow along with those densely written PowerPoints to some extent. I relied heavily on the handy Pleco dictionary in my Palm Treo, which has character recognition, so I can quickly scrawl the character on the screen to get a pronunciation and definition. Naturally, because the presentations and most of the rest of the institute will be concentrated in one topic area, the vocabulary items recurred. By the end of the day, I could refer to the list of words I was handwriting as I went along rather than needing to look them up in the dictionary.
In the discussions, the librarians expressed a strong desire for TKN to let their database be indexed by Google for display in Google Scholar. We all know that despite our best efforts, students and faculty often start their searches at Google rather than at our library home pages. A study has shown that since JSTOR was indexed by Google, student use of its resources has increased signficantly. Ah, that explains why my patrons come to me saying they couldn't find something, the library must not have it because it's not in JSTOR!
Friends and colleagues know that the big personal story for me here is that unlike all of the other attendees, I am not a China specialist first and foremost and do not have the native or near-native fluency in the language of all the others. Yesterday's presentations were ALL in Chinese, and the talk did sound like it was going millions more miles per hour than any of the language tapes I listened to in preparation. But as I anticipated, the study of Chinese that I have had and my knowledge of characters from decades of studying Japanese meant that I could follow along with those densely written PowerPoints to some extent. I relied heavily on the handy Pleco dictionary in my Palm Treo, which has character recognition, so I can quickly scrawl the character on the screen to get a pronunciation and definition. Naturally, because the presentations and most of the rest of the institute will be concentrated in one topic area, the vocabulary items recurred. By the end of the day, I could refer to the list of words I was handwriting as I went along rather than needing to look them up in the dictionary.
