Staff Papers
Mapping Networked Asia: Electronic Resources on Law and Health in China
A paper by Wan Wong, Senior Librarian, Asian Collections, National Library of Australia
Everyone would agree that we are now finding ourselves in an ever-changing world of information technology. The National Library of Australia has an active policy of collecting electronic resources as well as providing easy access to online resources in its web site. In the Asian Services section of the National Library, where the dominant format is still the good old book, we have also started to take on more and more electronic and online resources in the vernacular language. In this presentation I would like to introduce to you some of the electronic resources on health and law in China that we have acquired, as well as some useful sites on the World Wide Web. The main focus of this paper will be resources on China, but resources on Taiwan and Hong Kong will also be discussed. While I have tried to use mostly English language resources, the most useful and up to date electronic resources are still in the vernacular language.
Web-based and CD-ROM journals
Chinese journals in all subjects, including law and medicine, are now available on a web-based database, and index available in CD-ROM format. The Chinese Academic Journals Online is a full text database of over 5,000 Chinese serial titles, compiled by Tsing Hua University, the leading science and technology university in China. The Menzies Library of the Australian National University is in the process of setting up a mirror site of the database, and it will be an extremely useful resource when it is set up. On the other hand, the aggregated index to journals, magazines and newspapers provided by the Bibliographic Information Centre of the Peoples University of China, has now started to come out in CD-ROMs. This indexing service used to be published, and is still being published, in over 110 separate serial titles on different subject areas. Now that it is available in CD-ROM format, searching will be greatly enhanced. The National Library will be subscribing to it from next year. Obviously both of these electronic resources are in the vernacular, but without the equivalent in English, this is the closest we can get to a comprehensive coverage of current periodical literature from China.
Resources on law in China
The National Library holds a networked CD-ROM called Foreign law: current sources of codes and basic legislation in jurisdictions of the world. It is basically a bibliography of legal writing in various countries, and is a useful starting point for academic research. Two other libraries which hold this title are the University of New South Wales Library and the University of Melbourne Library.
To locate the texts of laws and regulations of China in English, my favourite web site is Chinalaw Web at http://www.qis.net/chinalaw/, hosted by the University of Maryland in the United States. The Chinalaw Webincludes an in-depth analysis of the four different legal jurisdictions in Greater China, namely the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China on Taiwan, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, and the Macau Special Administrative Region, formerly a Portguese colony. The site includes translations of laws and regulations from mainland China and Taiwan, where they are originally in Chinese, Hong Kong SAR law, and Macau Law, as well as over thirty legal articles on various topics related to Chinese law.
The Chinese counterpart to the Chinalaw Web is the China Law Information site hosted by the School of Law, Beijing University, the leading university in China. Its address is: http://www.chinalawinfo.com/. Although mainly in Chinese, there is a free database of 300 laws translated into English. If one wants the translation of all laws and regulations in China, there is also a subscription service for that.
Moving now into resources in the vernacular language, in 1996 the CD-ROM Laws and regulations of China was published by the State Information Centre of the Chinese government. It contains the full texts of laws and regulations of the Peoples Republic of China since 1949, and is divided into various databases by administrative levels, such as central and provincial; by format, such as cases and explanations; and by subject, including economic, financial, industrial, etc. The National Library now acquires the updates of the CD-ROM twice a year.
The online equivalent of this CD-ROM is China Law in Chinese at http://www.ceilaw.com.cn. or http://www.chinalaw.net Hosted by the State Information Centre, it includes two major databases. They are the National Laws and Regulations Data Bank which covers laws and regulations from 1949 to the end of 1997; and the New Laws and Regulations Online Searching. It also provides other useful information on Chinese law. There is a download function where you may download new legislations and standards for a fee (RMB 30, approx. A$7).
On the other hand, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, Peoples Daily, hosts a web site where the full texts of all laws and regulations are arranged by the year of promulgation. It is extremely easy to navigate provided the correct citation is in hand. The address is: http://www.peopledaily.com.cn/item/flfgk/index.html
As for Taiwan and Hong Kong, I have identified a few useful web sites. The law database on the web hosted by the Ministry of Justice, Taiwan government, is the best I have found so far. At http://law.moj.gov.tw/ , it has a searchable database of full texts of laws and regulations in Chinese. For Hong Kong, you may already be familiar with the BLIS, the Bilingual Law Information System hosted by the Department of Justice, Hong Kong SAR Government, at http://www.justice.gov.hk. While being free and very easy to use, it contains bilingual texts of current laws and statutes in force in Hong Kong, and is kept very up-to-date. Also the web site of the Hong Kong Law Society at http://www.hklawsoc.org.hk/pub/ provides a directory of law firms and new developments in the legal scene in Hong Kong.
Resources on health in China
As for resources on health in Chinese, it is a more elusive subject. There are several types of online resources relating to health, such as Medline type of index databases, general health information as in HealthInsite, and specific health information as relating to a particular country or medical system. There is also perhaps one more category of resources, and that is those on Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Firstly, on a Medline type database, there is a biomedical database of articles in Chinese available for searching on the China Health & Medicine Homepage. It is hosted by a virtual library & information service named the National Science and Technology Library, which is in turn a joint operation of the libraries of the Chinese Academy of Science, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering & Technology. The web site, at http://www.imicams.ac.cn/, offers searchable databases like Medline, and also a Chinese biomedical database called CBM disc update.
For health information specific to a country or place, there is the Hua ren yi yao wang, or Chinese medical net at http://www.medical.com.tw/ . This web site contains medical legislations, news about new drugs as well as a directory of doctors and dentists in Taiwan. The China Doctor care web site is a similar site, but located in Hong Kong. It offers general medical knowledge and news about drugs, etc. The address is http://www.chinadrcare.com/big5/index.html Both web sites are in Chinese. On the other hand, the Library of the Chinese University of Hong Kong offers many links to health-related academic and private organizations, as well as sites offering general medical knowledge. The address is http://www.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/electronic/hongkong.htm
Now into the highly specialized Traditional Chinese Medicine area. Although the term says Traditional Chinese, it does have some relationship to our contemporary scene. RMIT is the first university in the western world to offer fully accredited courses in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Victoria is the first legislature in the western world to legislate for the registration of Chinese herbalists. Now similar courses are offered in other places such as the University of Technology, Sydney. In the near future, we may be able to see more requests for information in Traditional Chinese Medicine as courses, and herbalists, proliferate.
The National Library has a CD-ROM and a VCD in its collection on Traditional Chinese Medicine. Aimed at a general audience, the VCD is a light-hearted introduction to the concept and practice of diet therapy in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Whereas the CD-ROM is an index to 24 classical works on Chinese medicine published by the Department of Health of the Taiwan government, which is very useful for research into the theoretical aspects of this old form of medicine.
In the online arena, the site that offers very useful information on Traditional Chinese Medicine is Acupuncture.com at: http://www.acupuncture.com/ . It gives information on acupuncture and other areas of Traditional Chinese Medicine arranged by different levels of expertise such as a student level and a practitioner level.
To conclude, by briefly discussing some of the more useful electronic and online resources related to law and health in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, I hope I have provided a glimpse of the type of resources now available in electronic form to us. While the resources in the vernacular may not be immediately accessible by the majority of librarians in special libraries, I still think it is important to include them here. With the pace at which information technology is progressing, there will be one day when we may have automatic translation of texts and access to online resources in various languages becomes seamless. But before that day comes, the language specialists at the National Library are always ready to help.
Wan Wong (Ms)
Senior Librarian, Asian Collections
Email: wwong@nla.gov.au
Titles of CD-ROMs held by the National Library:
Guo jia fa gui shu ju ku = Laws and regulations of China. call number: OCD
6
Zhong yi yao dian ji jian suo xi tong (Index on medical classics of
China) call number: OCD 39
Title of VCD held by the National Library:
Yao
shan yang sheng (Diet therapy for longevity) call number: OCD 46
