Staff Papers

New horizons, changing landscapes: building Asian collections at the National Library of Australia

A paper by Amelia McKenzie, Director, Asian Collections, National Library of Australia, presented at the conference 'New Horizons for Library Services: Towards a Better Understanding of Asia', organised by the Kansai-Kan of the National Diet Library, Kyoto, 19-21 November 2003.

Outline

The paper will briefly describe the history of the National Library of Australia's Asian collections and their chief strengths. A variety of acquisition methods are used to build the collections, including cooperative collecting agreements with other libraries in Australia. The Library is the provider of centralised cataloguing infrastructure for Australian libraries and has developed the National Chinese Japanese and Korean Service to meet the needs of cataloguers of CJK materials. The Library's access strategies for electronic resources will be highlighted, including development of improved Web access and digital resources. The paper will profile the users of the Asian collections and analyse recent trends in use of the collections. Finally, some of the management issues surrounding Asian collection services will be examined, such as staffing and performance measurement.

History of the collections

The National Library houses the largest and most actively developing research resource on Asia in Australia, with holdings of over 600,000 volumes. In its collecting the Library has emphasised East Asia (China and its periphery including Taiwan and Hong Kong, Japan and the Korean peninsula) and Southeast Asia (Burma, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam). Within Southeast Asia the Library gives most emphasis to its Indonesian and Thai collections. There are also significant English language collections relating to South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

This paper refers particularly to Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian and Thai resources, where the Library has concentrated most of its staffing, acquisition and other resources. Reference will be made to the Library's extensive Western language holdings from and about the region.

The current strengths of the National Library's collections and services were first established in the 1950s, when it was realised that there were no significant collections of Asian publications in Australia and no Australian library was regularly acquiring current publications from the region. The National Library and the Australian National University Library, in particular, started acquisition programmes which have made them the major Asian research collections in this country. The University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne libraries also began to build significant Asian language collections in the postwar period.

Strengths of the collections

The Asian language collections consist primarily of monographs, serials and microforms in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Indonesian. As at June 2003 over 600,000 volumes of monographs were held, of which 253,000 are in Chinese, 110,000 in Japanese, 37,000 in Korean, 36,000 in Thai and 170,000 in Indonesian. In addition there are some 11,000 serial titles, and extensive microform holdings. These figures do not include other smaller Asian language collections including Manchu, Mongolian, Tibetan, Burmese, Lao, Khmer and Vietnamese. In addition materials from mainland Southeast Asia are received and integrated into the Library's general overseas collections.

Over the last five years the Asian language collections have grown by 10%.

China

Current Chinese materials are acquired relating to the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Chinese collection has also gained strength from the acquisition of collections originally owned by Fang Chao-ying, W.P. Yetts, Walter Simon, Herbert Giles, Otto van der Sprenkel, Wei Tung- fang, Audrey Donnithorne, the London Missionary Society and the Australian Buddhist Library. There are also extensive holdings of Chinese series (ts'ung shu). Special emphasis in developing the collections has been placed upon modern China since 1911. The Library holds over 4,000 titles of Chinese periodicals and newspapers relating to this period. The Chinese collection also contains important works on politics and government, economics, sociology, local history, archaeology and fine arts.

The Library publishes the Chinese Acquisitions List, a monthly list of new titles acquired.

Japan

The Japanese language collection of the National Library of Australia numbers some 110,000 volumes of monographs and over 4,500 serial titles.

The strengths of the collection lie in the subject fields of the social sciences, especially economics, education, burakumin, women's studies, statistics, politics and government, and law, Japanese biography and history after 1868; fine and performing arts; military science; science and technology and Japanese works on Australia.

Less emphasis has been placed on the subjects of philosophy, religion, history before 1868, local history and geography, linguistics and literature because these subjects are the collecting responsibility of the Library of the Australian National University under a special agreement.

Another great strength of the National Library's Japanese collection is the large number of Japanese government publications received regularly on exchange from the National Diet Library in Tokyo. These include statistics of many kinds including various censuses and surveys; proceedings of the Japanese Diet; the government gazette; collections of laws and statutes; Japanese diplomatic records; white papers; various ministerial journals, etc.

Much retrospective material is held on microfilm including material on army and navy activities, foreign affairs, and Australia from various government archives; collections of papers of politicians like Okuma Shigenobu; prefectural statistics from the Meiji and Taisho eras; laws from the Tokugawa period; censored periodicals from the Occupation and so forth.

In addition there is the Harold S Williams Collection which, though predominantly in English, is also serviced from the Asian Collections Reading Room. This collection comprises mostly books on foreign settlement in Japan, some of which are extremely rare, and it is considered to be perhaps one of the finest collections on this subject in the world.

The Library holds the collection of General Sakakibara covering civil and military history and of Dr Tadashi Nakano on economics and the Japanese economy. Other important acquisitions include an extensive collection of biographical works and microfilms of Japanese archives on foreign affairs and army and navy activities. The Japanese collection, like the Chinese, is strong in modern history, the social sciences, particularly economics and politics, and fine arts. In addition, the Library holds more than 4,500 Japanese official and non- official serial titles.

Korea

At June 2003 the National Library held 26,000 titles in 37,000 volumes of Korean language monographs. The Korean collection has been growing at the rate of about 1,300 titles per annum over the past five years.

The strengths of the collection lie in the social sciences, especially economics, statistics, politics and government, foreign relations and law; Korean history, biography and archaeology; language and literature; philosophy and religion.

The collection is strong in government publications received regularly on exchange.

A significant Korean Triptaka is held, the Koryo Taejang-gyong (Tripitaka Koreana) in 1340 volumes. The Tripitaka Koreana was published in 1011 A.D. by means of wood block printing. The Library's copy is one of the eight copies made from the original blocks and bound in the same size as the original.

Thailand

The Thai collection consists of over 36,000 volumes of monographs, 1,400 serial titles and 80 newspaper titles, including some on microfilms.

The collection is strong in the fields of history, biography and archaeology, politics and government, economics and law, language and literature, philosophy and religion. There is an extensive collection of Thai cremation volumes. These are memorial biographical works published to mark a notable person's death. The collection holds three sets of Tripitaka, the major Buddhist writings, in different versions. One of these was a gift from His Majesty, King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand.

Indonesia

The National Library's Indonesian Collection is one of largest contemporary collections in the world. It comprises over 170,000 volumes of monographs, 5,000 serial and 250 newspaper titles plus several thousand reels of microfilm and sheets of microfiche.

The collection has considerable strength in the subject fields of government and politics, the social sciences, development studies, statistics and law. The Library also has strong historical collections from the period of the Dutch administration in Indonesia. These Dutch language sources consist of government reports, monographs and newspapers covering various aspects of social, economic and political importance for Indonesia up to 1940. These books were acquired from second-hand booksellers and as gifts. No original colonial records are held, except through purchases of commercially produced microfilms based on archives and libraries.

The period of the Japanese occupation in Indonesia is covered as well; the Library has significant collections of newspapers and reports for this period, in Indonesian and in Japanese.

The Indonesian Acquisitions List contains all new titles acquired in the previous quarter.

Acquisition methods

The Library has always sought to acquire materials directly from the country of publication. For Asian language materials, purchase from commercial suppliers is the preferred method of acquisition and all of the major commercial suppliers in China, Japan, South Korea and Thailand are used. National Library staff select titles from lists provided by library suppliers and order them direct from the supplier.

In some Asian countries exchange, deposit or gift remains the only way of acquiring government publications, such as the Japanese government publications received from the National Diet Library referred to above. We greatly value these supply arrangements and the long and cordial relationships which underpin them.

In other respects it is fair to say that genuine 'title for title' exchange has almost ceased as an acquisition method. It was realised many years ago that title for title exchange is an resource-intensive way of acquiring materials, not only in terms of staff time but also as the Library finds it increasingly difficult to source free supplies of Australian government publications to provide to exchange partners. Provided that publications previously received on exchange can be sourced adequately from a commercial supplier, we prefer purchase as an acquisition method.

However there remain countries of our region that lack an established book trade, making neither purchase nor exchange easy or convenient for libraries in other countries seeking to build collections. Recognising this as an obstacle to developing the comprehensive collections we seek, the Library made special arrangements to acquire materials from Indonesia and Thailand.

For Indonesian publications the Library established an Acquisitions Office/Regional Office in Jakarta in the early 1970's, headed by a member of its staff stationed in the Australian Embassy, Jakarta. Through this Office, the Library acquires locally published commercial, non-commercial and government publications from a range of local sources. The majority of the material acquired is in the Indonesian language, however there are also items in English and in regional languages. The collecting focus is on research-level print materials with substantial information content, with a representative sample of popular titles. Approximately 3,000 new monographs and 150 new serial titles are acquired every year. An evaluation of the Regional Office was carried out this year, and it was agreed that in spite of the continued development of the modern publishing market in Indonesia, it remains necessary to have a local presence there to acquire titles still not readily available outside Indonesia. The Library also acquires titles for eight other research libraries in Australia and overseas, who pay the direct costs of the acquisitions.

Publications from Thailand are acquired though regular purchase of commercial publications direct from the recognised Thai library suppliers, and through a locally-based acquisitions programme for government and non-commercial publications run through the Australian Embassy in Bangkok. The Thai Acquisition Programme has operated highly successfully since 1982, and in the 1990s similar but very much smaller versions of it were established in Laos and Cambodia. The success of all of these programmes, run without direct supervision by Library staff, depends heavily on regular monitoring visits by the Library's Thai Librarian and the goodwill of the Australian missions involved.

Cooperation and collaboration

As early as 1955 the Library negotiated a collecting agreement for Japanese print materials with the Australian National University in Canberra, and this was followed by three others with the same institution for Chinese provincial yearbooks, Korean materials and Thai materials. While some of these agreements are informal, all have stood the two libraries in good stead and enabled the rational use of scarce collecting budgets on both sides.

Recognising the value of academic partnerships in making its collections better known, the Library also participates in academic research projects based on the collections. An example is the Asian Accounts of Australia project, which was funded in 2000-2002 by the Australian Research Council and the Library to examine the Library's holdings of Australian-related material in Chinese and Japanese. The collection has particular strength in Chinese and Japanese language writings about Australian topics. There are currently about 1,000 works in Chinese and 3,000 in Japanese in the Australian collections. Australian holdings in other Asian languages are much more modest and probably consist of around 200 titles in all.

From the Library's point of view the most important product of the project has been the compilation of eight annotated bibliographies of Chinese and Japanese Australian material prepared by the project's research associates with advice and assistance from staff in Asian Collections. These bibliographies are now accessible on the Library's website.

Collaboration with national library colleagues in the region is also an important part of the Library's broader role. I have already referred to our long history of cooperation with the National Diet Library, and I am pleased to say that next year we will send our most senior Chinese staff member on a three month staff exchange to the National Library of China. In the past we have also provided bibliographic data to national library partners.

Bibliographic control

The standards for descriptive and subject cataloguing of Asian language materials are the same as for the general collection of the Library (AACR and LCSH), but specialised classification schemes are applied to Asian materials, such as the Harvard-Yenching classification for Chinese, Japanese and Korean materials. The Library always observed the practice of constructing romanised forms of headings for card catalogue entries created in the Chinese, Japanese and Korean scripts, while from 1985 onwards, when automated cataloguing for Asian materials was adopted, romanised records for Asian script materials were made available in automated records. The transliteration schemes used are Pinyin for Chinese, the modified Hepburn system for Japanese and the McCune-Reischauer system for Korean. American Library Association (ALA) transliteration tables are also used for Burmese, Khmer, Lao, Thai and Tibetan.

During the 1980s the Library's Asian collections moved from bibliographic control via card catalogues to control using automated systems. From 1985 romanised records for Asian script materials were made available on automated systems, and began to appear in the Library's microfiche catalogue and its online network. Conversion of card catalogue entries for materials other than Chinese, Japanese and Korean was completed in the early 1990s. Progress on converting the remaining card entries for these languages is still under way, with the majority of records remaining to be converted being Chinese monographs and serials.

Automation and vernacular scripts

The Library has always regarded the use of romanization as a necessary compromise for constructing card catalogues, and later building on-line catalogues, but it has never been seen as an ideal solution. Transliteration is cumbersome and time consuming for the cataloguing staff, and is difficult and in some cases impenetrable to the native speaker. It is the Library's goal to offer users seamless online access to both romanised and vernacular script records. As with access to electronic databases, referred to below, the Library aims to cater for a user group using either approach.

During the 1980s the Library followed overseas developments in the automation of vernacular scripts with great interest. In 1992 a study revealed that 78 out of 180 Australian libraries surveyed held material in vernacular scripts, the largest collections being those in Chinese, Japanese and Korean. An automated system for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean resources was envisaged, not only to control the National Library's own collections, but with the potential to serve as a national network for all Australian libraries wishing to use it.

The Australian National CJK Service

In 1996 the Library launched a Chinese Japanese and Korean Service based on the INNOPAC library system, which allowed the input and display of script characters. This was a co-operative project to build a union catalogue of CJK material, and to provide a ready source of copy cataloguing. The aims of the system were to allow libraries to create catalogue and authority data for the CJK material they held, include CJK characters in the data, and share that data. Use of the CJK system has allowed both staff and readers of the Library to work in the relevant language, and reduced reliance on romanisation. In recent years the CJK System project staff developed a migration process to convert existing records for Chinese materials containing Wade-Giles Romanised characters to Pinyin romanisation. For this a computer program was devised in-house, based on the work of Karl Lo at the University of California, San Diego. This mechanised conversion process was later adopted by the Library of Congress in making a similar change. The CJK system currently operates with 23 libraries around Australia.

Future directions for bibliographic control

While the National CJK Service has been a positive development for Australian libraries, the Library's vision for its non-Roman script collections has not yet been realised. It is our aim to offer users seamless and integrated access through the Web catalogue to both script and romanised forms of entry for all non-roman script collections, including Thai, Lao, Burmese and Khmer. In December this year, the Library will implement a new local system, Endeavor's Voyager library management system. We anticipate moving to the Unicode version of Voyager in possibly the next 12 months, so our aims for the local Web catalogue may eventually be realised. Part of the wider vision is for non-Roman script records to be similarly integrated into the national bibliographic database rather than in a separate CJK database as is now the case.

Asian Collections staff continue to work on converting the remaining card catalogue entries for Asian materials. Due to budget constraints the pre-1990 card catalogue conversion project has been suspended, but work continues on converting entries for the unique Chinese formed collections such as the London Missionary Society collection and the Sang Ye collection.

Bibliographic conversion tasks of this nature have generally been aided by the Library's adherence to internationally recognised bibliographic standards, and it is a principle we continue to apply across formats and platforms.

While the Library has developed and expanded means of access to its collections, it has preferred to seek these enhancements through the existing bibliographical infrastructure and within the standards framework. This has enabled the widest possible opportunity to share data, and has made it possible for the Library to undertake retrospective conversion of its data relatively easily.1

Access strategies for electronic resources

In addition to the print resources described above, the Library has acquired a range of electronic resources for the study of Asia, and closely monitors the development of new services and websites appropriate to its users. As with the print collections the Library's priority has been to acquire vernacular electronic resources from the country of origin. However the present state of publishing in Asia suggests that electronic resources are still only a supplement to print resources. While some of the CD-ROMs are electronic versions of their hardcopy equivalents, such as full text newspapers, the majority of the research type electronic publications are periodical indexes and abstracts on various subjects, or collections of legal texts.

This, together with the multiplicity of platforms and versions of software usually required has led to a so far conservative collection of electronic resources at the Library, focused on key reference resources issued on CD-ROM such as periodical indexes and newspaper backsets. Major English language resources such as the online Bibliography of Asian Studies and the key Asian research journals included in subscription databases, are also provided.

The Library has provided a range of links to Internet resources on its Asian Collections Web pages, and these constitute a valuable resource for researchers. The Indonesian pages in particular, monitored and reported by our Indonesian Regional Officer, are a rapidly growing and changing reflection of the variety and depth of Indonesia-related web resources.

At present we do not offer integrated access to these resources, with some available through our general overseas collections pages, others through language specific home pages and others such as standalone CD-ROMs not on the Web at all. This may not be an unfamiliar situation for some colleagues. It is one of my aims to integrate and standardise access to all our electronically based Asian and non-Asian language resources on Asia. This recognises that in Australia, our user population may prefer to work in both languages. A further reason for standardising access is to make best use of the Library's existing Web infrastructure. This will enable us, for example, to gather more detailed Web log statistics of what resources are being used, and how much: an important management tool in an institutional context.

Digitisation of Asian resources has not yet commenced as attention within the Library has focused on our primary Australian source materials.

User profile, usage trends and promotion

The National Library is an autonomous institution, without an attached faculty nor responsible for any other libraries. Its user population is drawn from the Australian public, and for Asian materials, from several distinct sectors. They are based in Canberra and Australia-wide.

The collections are used most heavily by academics, researchers and students. While the majority of these are local, as Canberra is an international centre for Asian studies research, interstate and overseas academics have access to the collections via inter-library loan and frequently make the trip to Canberra to use the collections on-site.

The collections are also used by government and Parliamentary researchers, while overseas students studying at Canberra's educational institutions increasingly use the collections for materials in their own language for their topics of research.

Other Australian and overseas libraries use the collection through inter-library loan while we receive a growing number of reference enquiries via email. The Library's new Copies Direct Service has stimulated remote use of the collections. It provides an online request form for the supply of a photocopy or reproduction direct to an individual rather than through another library. There are plans next year to introduce 'Borrow Direct', a similar service for loans of items direct to individuals.

Trends in use of the collections

In the last five years some fairly consistent trends in use of the Asian collections have emerged. While reader attendance has trended up, usage of the print collections has trended down; so while our reading room is still well used, not everybody is consulting our print collections. The decline in usage matches that measured for the total Library collection and for other major closed access collections overseas, so this is not unique to the National Library. However, it is clear to our staff that at there is a decrease in the number of researchers and graduate students using the collections in depth. This may in part be attributable to the reported decline of Asian studies and Asian language learning in Australian universities in recent years, not particularly in Chinese or Japanese but evident in Indonesian, Korean and Thai.2

Promotion

Promotion of the collections becomes even more important at a time of declining usage, and we are increasing our efforts to make our collections better known to both traditional and new users. Promotional efforts need to take different forms, and we plan a multi-tiered approach: not only increasing contact with potential users, but educating those users as to what the National Library can offer them.

To raise general public awareness of the riches of the National Library's collections, the staff give lunchtime talks on accessible topics of general interest such as Asian indigenous groups, Asian textiles or famous figures in Asian history. These are well-attended by members of the public.

The Library has a programme of annual fellowships, know as the Harold While Fellowship Scheme, which funds scholars to spend up to six months at the Library carrying out research based on the Library's collections. Fellows are required to report on their research and comment on the value of the collections to the research, which has been effective in promoting the collections in international scholarly circles. The Fellowships are increasingly competitive. We find that scholars prize the opportunity to work closely with the physical collections and receive personal assistance from a range of library staff.

The success of the Harold White Fellowships highlights what is special and important about the services offered to users. In spite of the speed and convenience of electronic services and online catalogues we still find that users of the Library's Asian Collections greatly value personal contact, and increasingly perceive it as the uniquely 'special' thing that the Library can do for them. With this in mind Asian Collections staff have commenced a programme of outreach visits to speak at local campus faculty seminars, graduate reading groups and academic conferences about the National Library's Asian Collections. Academic staff are invited to bring student groups to visit our reading room and we participate in study weeks and open days at the local campuses. This personal contact, sometimes simply putting a face to a name, brings results. Students and researchers who were completely unaware of our services, even our building, turn up in our reading room or telephone asking for assistance in the days or weeks following our contact with them.

Management issues

  • Staffing

Servicing Asian language collections in a non-Asian country provides a number of management challenges. The Library's Asian Collections Branch is staffed by a total of 16 mostly native speaking staff who provide reference services to readers as well as acquisitions, cataloguing and inter-library loan tasks. We therefore require a broad level of skill in library operations, language skills in both the native language and English, and good subject knowledge. Our staff are both uniquely multi-skilled and specialists.

We are fortunate to have had a stable staffing base for many years that has allowed the staff to develop these in-depth skills, but it is also the case that several of the more senior staff are close to retirement. The need for succession planning is urgent. We are currently examining the small language-based organisational units (each with only two or three staff) to try to provide the flexibility we need to do this. For example, a good career structure is itself a succession strategy, although it is difficult to provide this in very small groups. And whether we recruit from outside or promote from inside, it remains difficult to find all of the multiple talents we require in the same person. However, the changing patterns of migration to Australia from the region may come to our aid. For example, in 1990 were able to locally recruit a qualified native speaking Japanese librarian for the first time. Until that time, as my colleagues in the National Diet Library will be well aware, we had hosted a librarian from the National Diet Library on 2-3 year secondments to assist us in providing services from our Japanese collections.

  • Performance measurement

I will end this paper with a brief summary of the Library's performance measures for the delivery of Asian collection services.

The Library gathers a range of performance information to meet accountability objectives set by the Australian government and for its own management information purposes. The Library uses a management tool called the Balanced Scorecard which measures performance against a series of contexts or perspectives: the customer, the stakeholder, the financial perspective, the process perspective and the organizational learning and growth perspective.

For Asian Collections this translates into a number of relatively straightforward performance measures. We measure the timeliness, quantity and quality of the major processes performed and services delivered. We do not attempt to count everything; in some respects we count a great deal less than we did before. What we count, currently, is:

  • Number of new monograph and serial titles acquired
  • Number of serial issues checked in
  • Timeliness of receipt and invoicing of material
  • Timeliness of cataloguing new serials and monographs
  • Quality of cataloguing
  • Quantity of retrospective cataloguing
  • Quality of retrospective cataloguing
  • Quantity of document delivery requests supplied
  • Timeliness of document delivery requests supplied
  • Number of items delivered from stack to users
  • Number of reference enquiries answered
  • Timelines of reference enquiries answered
  • Quality of reference services

Quantity and timeliness targets are set by the staff of each unit, and reflect current resourcing in any year. Typical targets for one of the units are:

New monograph titles acquired: 2,200
Timeliness of invoicing and receipt: 100% within 2 weeks
Timeliness of cataloguing 75% within 2 weeks, 100% within 6 months

The Library measures quality through sampling and surveys. For cataloguing quality, senior cataloguers check random anonymous samples of newly catalogued titles and rate them according to a weighted checklist covering elements such as the accuracy of access points and subject headings. The standard of each record is summarised as high, acceptable or below standard, with the final number of satisfactory records expressed as a percentage of the total sample.

Reader surveys are conducted Library-wide by an external consultant every two years, through interviews and focus groups. The availability of comparative data from survey to survey has now given us a real sense of continuity and progress with our improvement programs. For example, the introduction of automated callslips via the public catalogue considerably improved user satisfaction with collection delivery from the closed stack.

Conclusion

At the start of the 21st century, comprehensive and current library collections on Asia are more important than ever. This together with the profound change taking place in today's libraries means that those building Asian collections have a doubly important role in making their collections seamlessly accessible. The Asian collections developed by the National Library since the 1950s are likely to continue playing a vital role in the growing exchange of information between Australia and Asia.

Footnotes

  1. Haddad, Peter 'Cataloguing and Classification at the National Library of Australia'. Paper presented at the IFLA Conference Bangkok, 1999.

  2. Maximizing Australia's Asia Knowledge. http://sites.uws.edu.au/social/asaa/report.pdf. Asian Studies Association of Australia, 2002.

For further information, please contact:

Amelia McKenzie
Director, Asian Collections
National Library of Australia
Parkes Place A.C.T. 2600
Australia
Email: amckenzie@nla.gov.au

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