Update, and a Real Photo Album
Our colleague Xi Chen of Oberlin (which I'm always proud to acknowledge as my alma mater) has created a beautiful online photo album of our activities. She has a serious-looking camera and the artistic skills to go with it!
This week each day will begin with a lecture by Dr. Joyce (Chao-chen) Chen, who is professor and director of the Graduate Institute of Library and Information Studies at National Taiwan Normal University as well as director of the university library. Yesterday she took us on an exciting, fast-paced tour of the many, many e-resources available from Taiwan. We were thrilled to learn that many are open for viewing by anyone. I was naturally drawn to the abundant Chinese-language-learning site, but there are many more, on practically every topic you can think of. Professor Chen has her own site, too, which includes an active crawl of Chinese proverbs that I want to parse when I get a moment. Once again I was able to follow along with the PowerPoint slides and web sites, if not the lecture itself. Following along with Taiwanese writing is a bit easier for me, though, because they don't use the simplified versions of the Chinese characters that have been implemented in Mainland China. This means that the characters used resemble those used in Japan much more closely (and sometimes are even identical), which makes them familiar to my eyes.
Timothy Jewell, Director of Information Resources, Collections, and Scholarly Communication at the UW Libraries, and his colleague Diane Grover, Electronic Resources Coordinator, gave us a crash course in the licensing of electronic resources. Their practical, information-packed lecture was enhanced by the accompanying course materials, a to-the-point chapter called "Negotiating a License Agreement," from Rick Anderson's 2004 book Buying and Contracting for Resources and Services AND a sample license (with the names blacked out to protect the guilty, of course). Our creative homework assignment was to locate "terms of death" in the license, which are conditions that are absolutely unacceptable. to libraries. Even though we are not front-line licensing librarians ourselves, it is of course greatly beneficial for us to understand more about this complex process.
This week each day will begin with a lecture by Dr. Joyce (Chao-chen) Chen, who is professor and director of the Graduate Institute of Library and Information Studies at National Taiwan Normal University as well as director of the university library. Yesterday she took us on an exciting, fast-paced tour of the many, many e-resources available from Taiwan. We were thrilled to learn that many are open for viewing by anyone. I was naturally drawn to the abundant Chinese-language-learning site, but there are many more, on practically every topic you can think of. Professor Chen has her own site, too, which includes an active crawl of Chinese proverbs that I want to parse when I get a moment. Once again I was able to follow along with the PowerPoint slides and web sites, if not the lecture itself. Following along with Taiwanese writing is a bit easier for me, though, because they don't use the simplified versions of the Chinese characters that have been implemented in Mainland China. This means that the characters used resemble those used in Japan much more closely (and sometimes are even identical), which makes them familiar to my eyes.
Timothy Jewell, Director of Information Resources, Collections, and Scholarly Communication at the UW Libraries, and his colleague Diane Grover, Electronic Resources Coordinator, gave us a crash course in the licensing of electronic resources. Their practical, information-packed lecture was enhanced by the accompanying course materials, a to-the-point chapter called "Negotiating a License Agreement," from Rick Anderson's 2004 book Buying and Contracting for Resources and Services AND a sample license (with the names blacked out to protect the guilty, of course). Our creative homework assignment was to locate "terms of death" in the license, which are conditions that are absolutely unacceptable. to libraries. Even though we are not front-line licensing librarians ourselves, it is of course greatly beneficial for us to understand more about this complex process.
The afternoon session was also a very creative and practical one. Our colleague KT Yao, Chinese Studies Librarian at the U of Hawaii, had solicited presentations from three pairs of our colleagues about their experiences with vendor services. This is what we are always eager to hear more of, of course, the lessons learned by others who are ahead of us on paths we are considering or about to embark on. Although the vagaries of local integrated library systems combined with libraries' organizational differences mean that no two of our experiences will be identical, there is always a tip or trick to be learned. KT had surveyed us in advance of the Institute and distributed a sheet showing which of us uses which ILS, a tool that will be invaluable for the further exchange of information and wisdom in the future.
The day was capped off by the demonstration of a book vendor's system that certainly dazzled me: not only can the librarian log on and select books, she can download free MARC acquisition records for the books as well as a spreadsheet with information about the selections. That alone is pretty cool, but in addition the librarian has administrative powers that allow her to give her faculty members a view of the system that allows them to recommend books to her for purchase. The librarian can then accept or reject the selections, and when she rejects them can note the reason, which the faculty member can see. For the selections she accepts, the faculty member can see updates of where the book is in the shipping and delivery process. Wow! I'll be wearing out my trial account when I get back to NYU, and I can't wait to have my faculty members try it out, too!
