The National Library of Australia’s Asia Research Forum was held at the National Library, Canberra, on 24 October 2005. With over 100 attendees, the one-day forum brought together librarians and academics studying Asia to discuss current trends in Asia-related research and examine how libraries can better meet the needs of the current and future generations of Asia scholars.
This is an edited version of the record kept by staff rapporteurs throughout the day. Our grateful thanks to rapporteurs Tieke Atikah, Anya Dettman, Eve Thwaites and Wan Wong for their careful record-keeping on the day, and to the entire staff of the Asian Collections Branch for their energy and resourcefulness in supporting the Forum prior to and on the day.
Please click here for the programme.
The National Library wishes to thank the following organisations for their generous support of the Forum:
Asia Pacific Futures Research Network
International Centre of Excellence in Asia Pacific Studies
Asia Bookroom, Canberra
Amelia McKenzie,
Director, Asian Collections
Professor James Fox, Director, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU
'In a time of change: where are libraries taking us?’
Having been given the opportunity to present the keynote address at the National Library’s Forum I would like to speak personally, and I hope, pointedly about the condition of Asian studies in Australia today. I have just returned from Helsinki University, where I was engaged in a review of its social science faculty. These exercises are common, with one almost every year: in recent years there have been reviews of Helsinki’s Humanities Faculty, including its Institute for Asia and African Studies; of the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), in Leiden and Amsterdam; and Leiden University’s Centre for Non-Western Studies (CNWS). In 2004 the ANU had reviewed its own Asia-Pacific programs.
This is what anthropologists are now calling ‘audit culture’. Within a global culture, this audit culture is becoming pervasive. It has many names: in academia, it is referred to as ‘benchmarking’, ‘national assessment’, ‘quality reviewing’. If anything, it is increasing, and we in Australia can expect more of it.
Benchmarking is done through extensive bibliometric identification of academic output in different categories (different varieties of books, book chapters, journal articles -- plus in some cases contributions to the popular media) coupled with some determination of impact and relevance, resulting in a specific pseudo-quantitative number.
The trouble is, Asian Studies doesn’t assess well – or easily – in these audits. The process of bibliometric assessment with citation and impact indices was pioneered in the natural sciences and some of that process carried over to the humanities, social sciences and to Asian Studies. Economists would say it can work for them. But what is Asian studies, and what is to be assessed?
One of the observations that I would make and we are all aware of – is that ‘Asian studies’ is a very different field from twenty years ago.
Twenty to thirty years ago, Asian studies was centred on history and literature – ‘deep history’, the study of the civilizations of Asia and the classics of its great literature. A major trend in Australia today is the broadening of the field – one could also call it a diffusion of Asian studies through a whole range of academic disciplines. This is combined with a focus on the contemporary – contemporary issues in Asia, relating to anthropology, demography, economics, international relations, politics and sociology.
In universities it has led to double majors; or, if students study a language, it is more likely to be an Asian language: languages like Chinese, Japanese (and to a lesser extent in recent years) Indonesian still attract considerable numbers. But there are also many instances of students who take time off, spend it working or travelling in Asia, and come back to study what they have become interested in overseas.
We, as Asian scholars, may agonize about Australia becoming ‘Asia literate’ but we have to recognize that Australia is already more ‘Asia-aware’ than any country in Europe and the United States itself. Asia is at Australia’s front door and the present generation has taken on this awareness as an aspect of Australian life.
All of this has relevance to how we organize and present our knowledge of Asia – and for this forum: how we organize our library collections: how specialized or general do we need to be? And to note the obvious: we are in midst of a digital revolution.
I would argue that we are only in the first stage of this revolution. It is a critical foundation stage and one in which libraries are in fact leading the academic community. Libraries have ceased to be repositories of large collections of books – and have been transformed into digital hubs in a network of electronic information. The National Library is exemplary in this regard and is a good indicator of where we are going.
One aspect of this digital revolution, which is particularly significant, is it marks the end of ‘the cult of the book’ and return of the spoken word and of visual images to the library. Jorge Luis Borges in an essay entitled ‘The cult of the book’ claims to identify the moment in history when the book became silent. In the ancient world, manuscripts were the means of transmitting the spoken word – because all manuscripts were intended to be read aloud, they were a mnemonic device for the transmission of speech.
Borges quotes St Augustine in his Confessions who recorded the change in the use of such manuscripts. Augustine writes of his utter amazement at the fact that his teacher and mentor, St Ambroise, the renowned bishop of Milan, would sit silently for hours ‘reading’ his manuscripts without speaking them. This skill spread and libraries became repositories of books that were intended to be read in silence.
Now, thanks to digital technology, libraries can as easily record oral narratives and ritual performances – much that was once ephemeral -- as they can books, papers and journals. This changes the nature of what can be created, collected, stored and indexed. Libraries can do this and have been doing this for some time, but academia has not yet ‘accredited’ these new outputs.
For several years now, some of the best theses in the Department of Anthropology at the ANU have included CDs as records of the rituals, dances, performances covered in the thesis. But such CDs can still only be considered as appendices and are not part of what is examined for the PhD – only the written word counts.
Similarly, in the academic world, what counts as a publication is rigorously defined and controlled – even to the point of restricting academic communication. Getting an academic monograph into print can take years, and if it is highly priced, few copies will be sold. Publishing academic research on the Internet can be done quickly and cheaply and it is instantly accessible to many more scholars all over the world.
How does this all relate to what I began with: Asian studies and the new audit culture?
Asian studies does not ‘audit’ well because:
1. Citation indices focus on English and more generally on prestigious American journals. If you publish in Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Thai, it hardly registers
2. If you produce something in a non-print media (a film, for example), it doesn’t register at all
3. And, generally, if you publish directly on the Net, it rarely counts without the authority of an identifiable publishing house.
I would predict that within the decade, if not sooner, much of this will change – and that libraries will be at the forefront in making things change. Increasingly – and perhaps in the not too distance future, exclusively – the materials that are ‘audited’ will be online. As search engines develop and as libraries take account of and deposit more than just books and journals, those other products of university life can and will be cited.
More difficult to predict is just how much of what is published will be ‘open access’ – this is the great struggle at the moment. The scientific publishing industry is a vast commercial enterprise. Academics cooperate in a review system that delivers their work to commercial publishers that then these publishers sell their products and access to their products back to libraries, universities and individuals. At the moment, their products are what ‘count’ in academic assessment. Open access publications are increasing but they still do not have traditional support system, nor the prestige, that open access publications aspire to.
On the other hand, commercial publishers, especially academic publishers, are beginning to recognize that a combination of open access, selective access, or timed-access can be highly profitable. For the time being, I can only envisage a ‘mixed’ system of publications, with universities such as ANU exploring the potential of e-press publishing.
Finally and most difficult to comprehend will be the change in our understanding of a ‘library’ -- as I said, libraries are already dense digital hubs in a network of information and communication. There are a variety of other models for us to contemplate:
Consider as one example of an online library: www.ibiblio, which styles itself as ‘the public’s library and digital archive’. It makes a gesture to include as many languages as possible. It also includes a whole range of media, which I know because it includes the site for ‘Cybersufis’, a fabulous source of digital recordings of zikir.
More serious is the PLoS, Public Library of Science (www.PLoS.org), that rightly identifies itself as ‘a world leading provider of freely accessible peer-reviewed online research’. It was established by a Nobel Prize Laureate. What the PLoS is trying to do is establishing the ‘peer-review’ authority and credentials to support the highest quality open access scientific publications: an accreditation matrix, which is essential in our present Audit culture. This is more than a digital repository as in the case of ibiblio. PLoS is trying to establish a peer-review system that is wider, more transparent and ultimately more prestigious than any so-called international journal.
Finally, let me go back to the case of Finland and Finnish academics at the University of Helsinki, where I have just come from assessing. They carry on an intellectual dialogue in their national language, but their international standing is assessed on what they publish in English. For this purpose, one index of the standing of the professors in the Faculty of the Social Sciences was their citation level on Google scholar (there to be used, if not believed).
I suggest to the academics among you: go to your computer and do some ‘self-surfing’: look at your presence on Google and then again on Google scholar, which is still being built. Remember to put your name in apostrophes. I would expect you would find a huge difference. (Of course, if you have a name like ‘fox’ it is a challenge: even ‘JAMES J. FOX’ is hardly exclusive … Google gives 12,800 citations: James J. Fox, as everyone knows, is a famous London cigar merchant since 1787! In Google, at least, I am number two … )
But jokes aside, it is useful to see (and assess) your presence on the net and possibly get a glimpse of what may be coming in our digital future. Thank you
Richard Thomson, Executive Office, International Centre of Excellence in Asia-Pacific Studies
Richard Thomson gave a brief introduction to the work of the International Centre of Excellence in Asia-Pacific Studies.
The Centre operates ten discrete programs in co-operation with its partner universities. Through these programs the Centre offers seed-grants to stimulate activity among national and international centres of Asia-Pacific Studies – including workshops and conferences, websites, new outreach and information resource centres, international promotion of Australia’s Asia-Pacific expertise, surveys of key stakeholders, and other activities.
Funding for the first three of these Programs is managed through a competitive grants system that is open to applications from acknowledged centres of excellence in Asia-Pacific Studies in Australia and managed through a Grants Committee. Funding for the remaining programs is targeted toward projects not readily served by an open competitive grants system – including the development of a major Asia-Pacific portal for www communications, the commissioning of surveys on the international standing of Australian Asia-Pacific research and education, and meeting the needs of Asia-Pacific Studies stakeholders for library/information and cultural/heritage services.
The Centre manages ten programs to enhance research and teaching capacity in Australia. These include:
Research and Teaching Resources and Outreach
Cross-sectoral Linkage Asia-Pacific Website
Institutional Linkage Asia-Pacific Resource Network
Regional Collaboration Library Enhancement Program
Research-Training and Education Arts and Heritage
Professional Association Support Asia-Pacific Education Forum
Professor Vera Mackie, ARC Professorial Fellow, Department of History, University of Melbourne. ‘From Orientalism to globalism: a brief history’
Professor Mackie described two historical paradigms in Australian research on Asia: the Orientalist view and the Area studies view. The former dominated until the mid-20th century, and focused on the ‘deep history’ of Asia, i.e. a study of its culture, literature, language, philosophy, recognizing the long history of civilization. The orientalist view was linked to the colonialist period, when Asia was seen as something to be ruled and controlled – as expressed, for example, in the writings of Edward Said.
The Area studies view underpinned the post-colonial era of capitalism, communism and cold war politics. This was a time of the (illusory) ‘helping hand’ of American foreign policy, and research focused on the division between the East and the West, as developing and developed countries. It tended to focus on particular historical periods of the country e.g. modernisation issues. It was often financially supported by organisations like the Ford Foundation (although there were no such organisations in Australia)
Now, said Professor Mackie, new paradigms are emerging.
Professor Mackie saw many new challenges in the newly emerging areas of research. Students are increasingly pursuing topics such as social movements, popular culture, sexuality, gender, internet, etc. However students without language skills are unable to use important vernacular materials in their research and undertake deep analysis of their topics. This is a problem: language skills need a long time and some effort to nurture.
Dr Louise Edwards, Convenor, Asia Pacific Futures Research Networks Project, Australian National University. ‘From disciplines and methods to issues and problems’
In the context of Professor Mackie’s picture of the development of Asian studies in Australia, Dr Louise Edwards, Convenor, Asia Pacific Futures Research Networks Project, Australian National University took up the theme of the ‘new’ Asian studies in her paper..
Dr Edwards noted that over 1400 academics in Australia have identified themselves as primarily Asianists or Pacific scholars. The Asia-Pacific Futures Research Network has a register of close to 300 Ph D students, pointing to considerable strength in Asian studies.
She described a generational change in Asian studies in Australia, where a large cadre of talented post graduates is emerging. In her view the field had changed dramatically and for the better, benefiting from the solid foundation laid by earlier generations of scholars.
Interestingly Louise saw fewer issues with language skills, pointing to the number of native-speaking Asian scholars who can speak the language and know the culture first hand. She spoke of her postdoctoral students who had very good language skills, some starting from primary school level.
Dr Edwards agreed with Professor Mackie that research topics are no longer bound by a particular discipline, such as history or politics. Issues and problems drive the research instead, such as gender or HIV-AIDS. Interdisciplinary studies, she felt, was distinctly Australian, as opposed to the US where discipline studies were still strong. For Australia though it would be the direction to the future.
She nominated sub-national studies, minority studies (especially in China), provincial studies and inter-country studies (e.g. migration between China and India; management of bird flu in Asia) as especially prominent now. Comparative studies were now often between countries of Asia, not between East and the West. She felt that because of Australia’s proximity to the region Australian scholars were more ready than US or UK scholars to respond to Asia in this way.
Finally, Dr Edwards noted that as research topics changed, so did the texts of those topics. Examples were:
Dr Edwards urged libraries to consider their role as collectors of the new texts: to develop a role as virtual storehouses and to transform their traditional roles to match these new and exciting developments.
Dr David Wright-Neville, Senior Lecturer, Department of Politics, Monash University ‘Research update: security and terrorism issues’.
Dr Wright-Neville’s research background is security and terrorism issues in India and Southeast Asia. He noted that while it is commonly claimed that 11 September 2001 changed the modern world, the world had been changing long before this date. ‘Terrorism studies’ has been running ever since to try to catch up with and understand the terrorism phenomenon.
Dr Wright-Neville questioned the interaction between the global and the local in Southeast Asia. Terrorism studies have a global and local nexus but terrorism is generally seen as an overwhelmingly global phenomenon. Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia and Abu Sayef in the Philippines are seen as forming part of a global conspiracy engineered by Al Qaeda (or, as Dr Wright-Neville put it, a bearded man with weak kidneys hiding in a cave in Afghanistan). This view can be compared with the monolithic view taken of communism during the Cold War.
Dr Wright–Neville saw a pressing need to inject the local back into the global. Terrorism in Southeast Asia has many global characteristics – such as the use of modern technology to disseminate information –but he noted that this does not mean that terrorist groups are a purely global phenomenon. ‘Underlying the global phenomenon are always particular and localized circumstances,’ he said. ‘How do we look at local circumstances and asses the impact on them of global phenomena? There are important differences from place to place. Abu Sayef in the Philippines differs from the Moro Islamic Front, although the impact of global forces can lead to temporary alliances among groups.’
He noted that in recent years there has been an erosion in the importance attached to area studies, as previous speakers had pointed out. It is now the case, he felt, that students lack the area-specific skills needed to discern local phenomena. ‘For example, Jihadi cyber punk is an extreme movement, but Jihadi punk in Britain differs from Jihadi punk in Europe. There is a need to comprehend the differences between third generation Muslim kids in Britain and Europe, England and France.’
Mass casualty terrorism is generally linked to Islam, although Dr Wright-Neville noted it was not limited to it. For example, he was supervising a PhD student researching the spread of Christian fundamentalist violence in the U.S. and the way it is metamorphosing into a new form of terrorism. ‘However,’ he said, ‘nuances between the Evangelicals and Pentecostalists (two Protestant Christian sects) are not readily understood by today’s students.’
To address these issues, libraries need to revisit the way they collect material pertaining to ‘the local’, taking in local and geographically specific materials and resources. ‘We need to excavate beneath the surface’, said Dr Wright-Neville. Researchers needed access to local and geographically specific materials enabling the nuanced interpretation needed for a better understanding. This nuanced approach is increasingly important as tensions between global and local issues/groups create a new pattern of politics.
At the same time, researchers find much material on the Internet: not just online journals and newspapers, but primary source materials such as websites, for example those mounted by terrorist groups hosting their own websites. So libraries also need to capture completely new national and international sources in this area, especially for researchers dependent on distant resources. ‘Identifying the resources and making them available is a key task,’ concluded Dr Wright-Neville.
Associate Professor Nanette Gottlieb, Reader in Japanese, School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Queensland ‘What a difference a decade makes! Research moves online’.
Professor Gottlieb’s message was that the Library, when one eventually got to it, was a haven of intellectual stimulus and spiritual balm. In the early 1990s the speaker was researching the sociology of language in Japan. Library sources were adequate, particularly from the National Library and sources in Japan. Browsing the shelves brought fruitful results.
In 2005 Professor Gottlieb is researching the linguistic stereotyping of minorities in Japan. These minorities use the Internet and this required her to change her research methodology. Internet use in Japan has given rise to a growing field of academic publications on, and numbers of MA and PhD students studying new media in Japan. Monash University in Melbourne is prominent here.
The University of Queensland has a Cybrary, a treasury of online resources for use from an office or home computer. When the speaker was researching the Burakumin (a marginalized Japanese minority) she found the text of an entire book she wanted online.
‘There are many chat groups on the Internet in Japan and also online hate speech groups. One can study linguistic stereotyping through online chat groups. Previously one would have had to travel to Japan to perform interviews for research,’ said Professor Gottlieb.
In summary, Professor Gottlieb advocated collaboration on a national level to support research like her own. A consortium approach to the purchase of Japanese language databases would greatly improve and increase access for researchers.
Associate Professor Peter Jackson, Division of Pacific and Asian History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU
Ephemera and erotica: sources and materials for Asian cultural studies and Asian queer studies
Professor Jackson commented that the current generation of postgraduate students and academic researchers were generally well-skilled and building on the work of earlier generations. In addition, recent years there were increasing numbers of Thai students in Australia.
Dr Jackson was in agreement with other speakers in identifying a move away from an area focus in Asian studies. Sometimes this had serious consequences, as for example when students studying a multidisciplinary topic were required to conduct fieldwork in a country such as Thailand, which they knew little of and whose language they did not speak. Dr Jackson related his personal experience of advising students in this situation, commenting that a decline in language skills was becoming common among students with traditional Australian backgrounds. He pointed to cutbacks in language programs within the education system generally as a reason. The major languages (Chinese, Japanese) have maintained sufficient influence, he claimed, but smaller languages are less successful in maintaining a profile.
Professor Jackson noted that we have gone from text-book based research to multi media research. Typical recent research topics included:
Professor Jackson described the successful Sexualities, Genders and Rights in Asia Conference held in Bangkok in July 2005. With a large proportion of papers given by researchers from the region, the conference demonstrated an emergent academic field in Asia. However graduate students studying these issues in Asia could not find supervisors or a forum for academic research. The conference itself was organised from outside the region as no academic institution in Asia felt able to take responsibility for it.
Professor Jackson saw different perspective of Asia in Australia, the U.S. and Europe. ‘The US and Europe have done more background research but our view is unique,’ he said. He lamented the fact that European funding agencies and the EU provided funding for research between Asian countries and the 25 European countries, but this research funding did not extend to Australia or Canada.
Finally Professor Jackson enumerated the sources he felt to be most important for research in his field, and that currently did not form part of library acquisition programmes in Australia.
Theses
A wide range of Thai postgraduate dissertations at PhD level on a range of topics interesting to the West. Many of these were not printed as books or journal articles and were not obtainable through commercial dissertation products such as University microfilms [Now Proquest’s Digital Dissertations – Ed.].
Thai dissertations are supposed to sent as legal deposit items to the National Library of Thailand but often are not, which necessitated follow up with individual institutional libraries. Professor Jackson commented that some theses were very important, providing snapshots of the current local perspective.
DVDs and VCDs
VCDs – only released in less developed countries – are of lesser quality than DVDs, easily produced and very inexpensive. Video technology disappeared about three years ago in Thailand and VCDs have emerged as a new and popular medium for social activists, such as community organizations and groups. For example, VCDs on the violence in Southern Thailand have been released for ‘underground’ circulation - technically they are banned and unavailable.
In the mainstream, production companies holding rights to old movies now release them on VCD which can be hired from rental stores. They are used to reproduce archival TV footage and news reports released on special occasions.
Sex publications
Professor Jackson emphasised the importance of acquiring sex publications as a record of the history and background of the emergence of this culture. Technically illegal, there was sensitivity in Thailand about these sources and they were banned in the home country.
Websites
He noted that non-English language websites – fewer than 50% are in English – quickly disappeared from the Internet, but they too were a unique record of modern Asian society.
Dr Lenore Lyons, Director, Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), University of Wollongong
Two steps forward and one step back: using digital media in Southeast Asian Studies
Dr Lyons described her research as involved in multi-subject, interdisciplinary collaborative research projects covering Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia and on the subjects of sociology/anthropology/political science/human geography/gender studies. She was leading an ARC project on identity construction of those living on Singapore/Indonesia border areas, and documenting diverse NGO activism in the region.
Methods and materials used by Dr Lyons included:
-Semi-structured interviews
-Observation
-Documents
Reports/Business plans
Newspapers (English/Malay/Indian/Mandarin)
-Tourism brochures
-Websites
Digital media in particular provided her with new forms of data and data analysis. In terms of data collection, she noted, the digital format is cost effective and saves time (compare online newspapers with microfiche or hard copy)
Digital media enabled her to work on data in the field, using laptop access, saved office space and enabled her to share material easily with collaborators. It can be transported easily and saved the cost of postage of hard copy. Sound and image files were able to be manipulated for data analysis.
Access and management of electronic resources
Dr Lyons said she regularly accessed online databases, especially newspapers. She noted that the newspaper database Factiva offered text-only html files with no images. As a researcher she found the complete page representation important and wished that vendors could capture other elements of hard copy. She noted that Factiva did not provide citations referenced to the newspaper page number.
Access to Asian newspapers is uneven. Singapore Press Holdings’ archive (1990s onwards) can be accessed online ($15 per hour plus download fee, or $900 per annum and $3 for every article read), but there were no archives of Indonesian newspapers.
This made visits to libraries to use paper copy holdings necessary. As a researcher Dr Lyons was willing to make her own copies of articles using a scanner or digital camera but some libraries did not support digital copying by users. For example, the brand new National Library of Singapore building had no public-use digital photocopiers [scanner] or cameras.
Dr Lyons described the methods she used to manage digital files. These included:
Librarians’ issues
Dr Lyons summarised these as access and management issues. There was uneven access to resources in electronic format both from and about the region, such as Indonesian newspapers. In addition, libraries need to both provide and allow public-use digitising technology, such as scanners and cameras.
A specific area where researchers needed assistance from libraries related to management of digital files:
Amelia McKenzie, Director, Asian Collections, National Library
Ms McKenzie gave a brief introduction to the Asian collections of the National Library, noting that they needed to be better known amongst Australia’s researchers. With over 630,000 volumes and an annual budget of $1.2M for vernacular language materials, the collection was by far the largest and best-supported in Australia.
She referred to National Library initiatives which supported research, such as the provision of the National Bibliographic Database service and the National CJK Service. The Library provided up to four Harold White Fellowships annually, with an additional Fellowship based on the Japanese collections. Travel grants would be provided for younger scholars to travel to use the Asian collections in the near future.
There was a demonstration of the new Libraries Australia service, and a lively question and answer session followed. Several questioners sought more information on getting access to Libraries Australia on their campuses. It was noted that individuals will be able to get free access to search-only services of Libraries Australia in early 2006. It will also have script display capability for Asian languages.
Ms McKenzie then presented the findings of a national survey of library usage patterns of Asian studies postgraduates and researchers. Many of the results bore out the trends described by earlier speakers. Of the 175 respondents to the survey, 40% were located in a traditional Asian studies faculty, and 60% in a non-Asian studies department. The majority of them took a multi-country or multidisciplinary approach to their research.
English was the language most used for research, followed by Indonesian/Malay, Chinese and Japanese. Other languages had only a scattering of adherents in the sample with only Vietnamese, Thai, Hindi, Tibetan and Tagalog each recording up to four responses each. Only 75% of the sample indicated they had the necessary language skills to do their research, with 25% saying they either did not have necessary language skills, or were not confident of them.
The library and the Internet were almost equally favoured as sources of information for research by nearly all of the sample. Almost half of the respondents said they used networking and blogging to find resources for their research.
The younger generation’s technological skills should not be mistaken for information literacy. 20% of the sample said they needed help searching the library’s catalogue, 65% of the sample said they would like more help finding out what resources existed for their subject, and as many as 60% of the sample said they needed help searching electronic databases.
Drawing on the trends in research discussed by speakers and demonstrated by the user survey, Ms McKenzie highlighted a series of issues and challenges for Asian collections librarians and managers:
Areas for future collaboration could include:
Wan Wong - Senior Librarian, Chinese Unit, National Library
Dr Barbara Nelson, Information Access Officer (South Asia & Middle East), Menzies Library, Australian National University
Ms Wong and Dr Nelson gave a brief overview of the resources included in Asia on the Web: digital resources for Asian studies. The guide is available on the Web at:
http://www.nla.gov.au/asian/dresources.html
The roundtable discussion was led by a panel comprising:
Amelia McKenzie, Director, Asian Collections, NLA Dr Aline Scott-Maxwell, Senior Asian Studies Librarian, Monash University
Renata Osborne, Manager, Asia–Pacific Menzies Precinct, ANU
Amelia McKenzie raised the first of the questions for discussion:
What directions should Asian collecting take over next 10 to 15 years, including of non-traditional resources?
She recapped comments made earlier on issues and challenges for libraries with Asian collections. Examples of new areas for collecting now and in the future included:
Ms McKenzie noted that this kind of acquisition program would be more successful with the close collaboration and suggestions of the academic sector.
Various comments and questions were raised by the audience:
Can Asian websites be included in the NLA’s Pandora archiving project, which archives Australian websites?
Formed collections are a strength; can they be best preserved by digitisation?
What should academics do with their personal collections of digital material, like Dr Lyons’ store of digital images?
Current digital formats will become obsolete: for how long will the PDF format be in use?
Would the National Library collect textiles and objects from Asia?
In response, Pam Gatenby (Assistant Director-General, Collections Management, National Library) said that these were some of the current challenges libraries faced in collecting and preserving electronic format materials. She was not opposed to the idea of archiving Asian web sites using the Pandora infrastructure. At the same time, it was necessary for academics to be aware of the implications of holding large collections of electronic files. In answer to the last question she noted that artefact collections are not part of the Library’s Asian collection brief.
Jan Fullerton (Director-General, National Library) commented that while digitisation greatly increases access and enhances preservation, it is expensive, and the demand for modern electronic retrieval outpaces the Library’s ability to change the form of the resource from paper-based to electronic.
Pam Gatenby added that the National Library had a valuable role to play in facilitating the use of all library collections by users, through the Libraries Australia service as well as its involvement in tertiary sector projects aimed at developing e-repositories and cross-searching, such as the ARROW project. She also noted that the NLA has a duty to ensure that if important collections in other institutions are in jeopardy then it must step in.
There was comment from the floor on the increased requirement for technical skills and knowledge on the part of both librarians and academics to keep up with these changes, and agreement that it was a critical role in facilitating research. Speakers endorsed the view expressed from the floor that the academic and library sectors should work closely together.
Dr Aline Scott-Maxwell introduced and spoke to the next topic.
How can cooperation within the library sector benefit the provision of library resources and services for Asian studies teaching and research?
She made the following points about library cooperation:
Inter-library cooperation sometimes involves arrangements such as reciprocal borrowing between institutions with requirements for passing on charges such as fee for service. While budgetary reasons push most collaboration, done well it can lead to improved services for users and be cost-efficient for libraries.
She commented that to maximise knowledge of new technologies, a wide exchange of information and ideas was required between libraries.
In relation to Asian studies, could there be more cooperative arrangements? For Asian collecting a collaborative strategy is especially necessary. Reasons for this are:
Dr Scott-Maxwell identified three functional and successful cooperative projects covering Asian language materials at present:
For the future, Dr Scott-Maxwell referred to two proposed projects. Monash University and the NLA are discussing the development of a shared portal to Korean online resources. Sydney University is considering outsourcing its Korean language cataloguing to Monash (at a fee per title).
Renata Osborne spoke on the final topic of the day.
What is the role of the subject specialist in today’s library?
Ms Osborne commented that the old role of the subject specialist was still there, as most people still use the catalogue and still need subject matter expertise. There are new elements in the equation: the proliferation of electronic information requires that subject specialists be aware of developments in electronic information technology: they must be IT literate and know how to use the new technology and how to manipulate information.
Libraries are no longer an independent part of information distribution. Libraries are relevant in archiving, for example, the ANU’s Chinese Digital Archive involved library staff and IT experts—the framework and mechanisms are in place for librarians and IT to cooperate.
What are the new roles? They include devising what metadata information should be input for electronic resources. Libraries are creating digital resources and collaboration is needed for digital archives. An example is the Digital Archive for Chinese Studies (DACS), based in Leiden, which archives Chinese websites and opens the archive to others in the world.
How do we ensure that we can provide future generations of experts to manage specialist library collections? One way could be by pooling resources among several libraries. Another could be by identifying new graduates who will find working in libraries worthwhile and want to work in Asian studies librarianship.
Amelia McKenzie commented that the onus may be on library management to develop our own subject and language specialists. It was in fact very difficult to identify qualified and experienced librarians with good Asian language skills to manage Asian collections. In addition there were succession issues to be taken into account, as older staff retire and need to be replaced.
Pam Gatenby, Assistant Director-General, Collections Management, National Library of Australia
In closing the Forum, Pam Gatenby thanked all of the speakers for their interesting and challenging presentations. She commented that it was particularly valuable to bring together academics and library professionals across industry sectors to have a thoughtful and wide-ranging discussion of what is required of libraries and what libraries can deliver. She felt the day had revealed some clear trends in patterns of research on Asia which the National Library would take into account when developing collections and planning services.
Pam thanked sponsors of the Forum for their enthusiastic and practical support: the Asia Pacific Futures Research Network, International Centre of Excellence in Asia Pacific Studies and the Asia Bookroom, Canberra. She said the National Library valued these partnerships and saw collaboration as a key part of achieving some of the aims discussed in the Forum.
Finally, Pam thanked Amelia McKenzie and the staff of the Asian Collections Branch for developing the programme and organising the Forum.
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