Paper written and presented by Marie Sexton, Principal Librarian, Asian Collections at the Southeast Asia Resources Planning Pre-CONSAL X Meeting, Kuala Lumpur, 18-20 May 1996.
This paper will provide a briefing on developments in Australia, in particular at a national level, on Southeast Asia.
As my colleague, Amelia McKenzie, Regional Officer, Asia, who is located in the Australian Embassy, Jakarta, will be speaking on acquisition and collection development, I have been asked to address the following topics : national planning and collaboration, preservation, electronic access, bibliographical control and indexing, regional co-operation and future prospects.
I will try to provide information on key contacts and email addresses/websites, etc. to allow anyone interested to take matters further. I must point out that I am not an expert in any of these topics.
This meeting provides an excellent opportunity to meet with our overseas colleagues and to see if Australian library collections and services can be brought even more into the mainstream.
As will be seen, some activities which I will describe and issues I will raise, apply to other areas of Asia. An issue of Australian Library Review v. 11, no. 3, August 1994 contained a number of useful articles on Asian librarianship in Australia.
First some initial brief information is attached on Australian libraries with a significant interest in Southeast Asia. As can be seen, the number of libraries is relatively small.However, a number of academic and special libraries have an interest in the Southeast Asian region in subjects ranging from law to agriculture.
I also attach the pages [Results of the DNC library materials survey December 1994. Canberra, DNC Office, 1995 p. 17, 24]. relevant to Southeast Asia from a document prepared early last year for the 3rd National Roundtable on Libraries and Asia by Rachel Jakimow and Cliff Law in the Distributed National Collections Office, National Library of Australia. This document is a treasure-trove of information related to Asian library resources in Australia.
The major academic and research libraries with Southeast Asian interests in Australia are spread in the Australian capital cities : Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Darwin.
However, this information may accidentally minimise the relative importance of Southeast Asia as a topic in many Australian libraries. For example, with increasing numbers of students at both the secondary and tertiary level in Australia from the Southeast Asian region, books on Southeast Asia area often acquired for schools, universities and public libraries. Teaching on Asia is being widely integrated into a wide variety of subjects as Australia seeks to make more of its geographical links to Asia. Vernacular languages collected for schools or libraries are predominantly in Vietnamese and Indonesian, with some Thai. The Southeast Asian region is the natural holiday destination for many Australians and many Australian schools or universities have formal links with institutions in the region.
National planning and collaboration
In the 1990s, Australian libraries are putting more emphasis into national planning and collaboration of resources. As resources are limited and Australia's population is relatively small (20 million) and very dispersed throughout the continent, the advantage of adopting a more planned approach is seen to have benefits.
The time of rapid growth in academic resources of the 1970s and 1980s is now over. A change of government in March with a program of reductions in federal outlays means nervous times for universities and schools and government authorities (as is the National Library).
Three National Roundtables on Libraries and Asia have now been held (1991, 1993 and 1995). Documentation from the latest meeting is at http://www.nla.gov.au/dnc/asiart/home.html [Link is no longer active]
These gatherings have provided a mechanism for librarians and academics to meet and agree upon priorities for action. Their success, measured by the increasing numbers of libraries who have attended, plus the strong expression in favour of further national meetings, has been heartening, even if surprising. The emphasis on library issues related to Asia is a response to greater government interest in Asia, especially in areas of trade and economic development.
The National Library, through the establishment of the Distributed National Collections Office, is now attempting to form a bridge between the various library sectors in Australia through meetings, consultations and detailed collection surveys. More information at http://www.nla.gov.au/dnc/dnchome.html [link is no longer active]. The Australian Conspectus is maintained by the DNC Office. It is adapted for Australian requirements from the Research Libraries' Group Conspectus.
Being a federation, national activities are always potentially suspect, whether it is for gun-control or libraries. Universities and other major libraries have autonomy and national planning can only occur when there is a common desire for action.
Following the 3rd National Roundtable last year, a Reference Group was set up which meets regularly through telephone conference calls. Its members are the Chief Librarians of the University of Sydney, Northern Territory University and Murdoch University, plus senior librarians from the Australian National University, Monash University, LaTrobe University and the National Library of Australia, involving the DNC Office and Asian Collections. The President of the Asian Studies Association of Australia and a representative of the Council of State Libraries also participate.
Its purpose is to follow-up the outcomes of the Roundtables and to be aware of developments on Asian library activities in Australia.
What may be a factor in the support for national meetings and action in Australia on Asian library resources and services is the strong concentration in Canberra of book holdings. As can be seen from the tables on library holdings, referred to already, the Australian National University and the National Library between them hold 230 000 of the 303 000 library items in Southeast Asian vernacular languages reported to the 1994 survey and 255 000 of the almost 300 000 items in English. I would say that these figures probably underestimate the holdings in other libraries.
Another national mechanism available to academics through research funding made available for collaborative projects by the Australian Research Council.
However, to date, there have not been recent successful new major national projects concerning Southeast Asia. The Indonesian Acquisition Program, which Amelia McKenzie will describe, has existed successfully since 1971 and has recently grown from three to five participating libraries. One Southeast Asian project which is now under consideration is a proposal to seek funds to set up a national vernacular Thai database with cataloguing and OPAC capacities.
The reason for the lack of recent national projects focussing on Southeast Asia is probably because there has been greater emphasis at the Roundtable meetings in relation to East Asia, and now South Asia. There have been urgent and important issues which are being pursued at a national level, for example, in setting up a national Chinese, Japanese and Korean language cataloguing system which provides a common online public access catalogue (OPAC) with script characters. This should be implemented later this year. It is based on the Innovative Interfaces CJK system and will be run by the National Library as part of its networked services to libraries. South Asia has been somewhat neglected in Australian libraries and it was agreed that there was a need for an agenda of new initiatives and acquisitions. Other outcomes of earlier Roundtables was a Survey of Trends in Asian Studies and Asian Collections in Australia, prepared by George Miller. This was based on a survey he jointly undertook with Andrew Gosling of the National Library. It was published by the ANU Library in their Occasional paper series as no. 6. And from the conclusions of the survey, came the Asian Studies Library Awards, which have funded post-graduates to travel to where the library resources are in Australia, mainly Canberra!
Perhaps for the Southeast Asian script languages have not received the same interest, to date, as the latin alphabet has been used in library catalogues and networks for many years. They have not been seen to present the same magnitude of problem as the East Asian languages. The Australian Bibliographical Network, which is limited to the latin alphabet, set up in 1981, provides a comprehensive cataloguing system and online reference enquiry. It has successfully met the needs of Australian libraries for cataloguing data.
However, the lack of recent new programs for Southeast Asia may also reflect other pressures. The decision of the compilers of the SEAMRG newsletter (Southeast Asian Materials Research Group) to cease publication in the early 1990s reflected the realities of tight funding. In part, the APSIG newsletter (Asia-Pacific Special Interest Group of the Australian Library and Information Association), published in Sydney by Craig Boaden for the Group, fills some of the gap.
As mentioned below, there is a need for Australian libraries interested in Southeast Asia to be looking for strong links with libraries and information providers situated in the region and overseas, rather than just thinking nationally.
One important feature has been the involvement of professional groups. I have already mentioned the Asian Studies Association of Australia and the Asia Pacific Special Interest Group. Both have been involved in a variety of library meetings and have taken separate initiatives.
The National Preservation Office (NPO) was set up in the National Library to foster a national approach to preservation.
Dr Jan Lyall is the Director and well-known internationally for her work on the UNESCO Memory of the World Program.
The National Library, in its role as the IFLA Regional Centre for Preservation and Conservation (PAC), has been active in a number of regional initiatives. It distributes copies of the International Preservation news to interested libraries in the region. Contact the NPO if you wish to be placed on the mailing list.
An interesting group is APACA (Australian Preservation & Conservation Abroad Group) which is comprised of preservation experts and various bodies interested in promoting and co-ordinating action in this area. A recent publication is Survey of Australian heritage preservation & conservation assistance & Related activities in the Asia-Pacific region 1984-94, compiled by Guy Petheridge and Paul Wilson, published last year. Copies are available from the National Preservation Office.
APSIG (mentioned above in relation to the role of its newsletter) has been successfully funded by various bodies including AusAID, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the National Library of Australia in organising seminars to undertake preservation training projects in the region. The aim is to increase the level of expertise in the region of practices and methods in preservation. Ross Harvey, an Australian-based researcher, who has been a trainer in some of these programs and who is interested in the region, has recently published a survey article in Asian Libraries, December 1995 called "Libraries and archives preservation in countries of the ASEAN region" which draws attention to the need for more research in this area.
As can be seen, the emphasis has been on dissemination of information, training and increasing the level of expertise in the Southeast Asian region in co-operation with training institutes, library associations and national libraries.
Within the National Library's policies for preservation of its overseas collections, priority has been allocated for its collections from Indochina, specifically Lao and Khmer materials. This is because it is accepted that libraries in those countries have had difficulty in preserving their national record and that some of the materials held are probably unique.
It is hoped that in the longer term, funding would be found to microfilm and then digitize these collections for preservation.
One significant gap in Australia is the difficulty in gaining a full knowledge of what newspapers from the region are being received and preserved in Australian libraries. Generally, Australian libraries have relied upon the production of microfilm in other countries for newspapers in the region, rather than undertake their own projects. However, it appears that with the overall reduction in the Library of Congress program, a more concerted international approach, involving Australian, regional and western libraries could be useful. Carol Mitchell of the University of Wisconsin has already started useful work on an inventory. Perhaps the Internet can provide at least an alternative way of listing newspapers internationally? Perhaps Internet sites could be linked to show the holdings of major collections?
Electronic access, bibliographical control and indexing
The use of the Internet has developed fairly quickly in Australian academic libraries in Australia. Electronic access provides a new way to cope with dispersed resources in a large continent and internationally. One particularly important initiative is the work done by Dr T. Matthew Ciolek at the Coombs Computing Centre which would be already known to you (http://coombs.anu.edu.au). Matthew has made a remarkable contribution in last few years in listing Asian subject sites both in Australia and overseas. The development of further Internet listings is going to be an important area for Australian libraries, including the National Library, over the next year or so.
Probably the one format where libraries and users are moving fairly quickly into electronic access is newspapers. Some newspaper publishers are now making sections available on the Internet or in the form of CD-ROM. Australian librarians are unashamed users of such American listings of electronic newspapers such as Newslink's (www.newslink.org). A check of a listing of electronic newspapers from the Southeast Asian region shows that nine are currently available.
A new Australian CD-ROM publication is Asia ROM to be issued by INFORMIT, which is located in Melbourne and sponsored by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. It has been a project of Sandra Oxley of INFORMIT. (More information at http://www.informit.com.au). It is a pioneer work in presenting Australian electronic information on Asia.
Apart from containing two interesting databases on Indonesia, including INTAN MAS, set up at Northern Territory University, the CD-ROM contains a Directory of Databases on Asia, compiled by Nerida Cross and edited by Susan MacDougall. This was organised by APSIG with funding from the Australian Council for Library and Information Services. This should provide a good source to information for anyone interested, not just Australians, to the whole Asian region.
I have referred to INTAN MAS, which is a database on Eastern Indonesia,already. As I believe that Oliver Mann of Northern Territory University, who has been involved in its creation, will be at this meeting I will not give more details in my paper. It is an interesting example of how a specific collecting and service interest of an institution, Northern Territory University, can lead to the creation of a widely available database which has received international recognition.
The Australian National University has set an outstanding example in relation to electronic information on Asia. It recently developed the Indonesian Serials Database (http://www.anu.edu.au/Asia/Indo/IndSer.html) .
This provides access to titles of primary articles from selected Indonesian language serials published in Indonesia. George Miller of the ANU Collection Management Division has been responsible for its development. A recent notice in March stated that the database will not be updated while they seek alternative funds.
One stumbling block in such activities is funding. This leads to problems with the continuity and updating of projects. One project, which I will mention in passing, is the Vietnamese Union Catalogue which is available in fiche form from the National Library. It is hosted on the Australian Bibliographical Network. If all goes well, there should be more progress on this later this year, with the addition of Vietnamese national bibliographical records.
In the longer term, electronic networking, hopefully linking databases, will offer new opportunities in the Southeast Asian region. There is awareness in Australia of the need to encourage the development of infrastructure in the region. One recent co-operative funding projects was an Australian National University initiative in promoting the development of the Internet in Vietnam. This worked well with expertise, equipment and training provided to various centres. A member of the National Library's system staff with expertise in the Internet, Tien Dao, who is of Vietnamese birth, has now visited Vietnam several times with funding from this project.
Regional co-operation and future prospects
Australian libraries are looking towards the region and global co-operation as a way to offer a new method of delivering services.
I have described some of the collaborative projects already undertaken in the Southeast Asian region in relation to preservation, bibliographic access and automation, as Australian librarians see the development of these activities as fundamental building blocks to closer co-operation. I have concentrated generally on those which have been funded through various types of assistance programs. In the future, there may be more on the basis of commercial enterprises. One example is AusHeritage, Australia's Network for Cultural Heritage Services, which aims to export Australia's heritage goods and services to the region, including materials conservation, education and various trades. Projects have already been carried out in various countries, including Malaysia and Vietnam. More details from Prof. Davis Dolan, Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia (fax 61 93 51 25 94).
Kerry Webb, Director of Digital Library Projects at the National Library of Australia, returned recently from attending conferences in the United States. His paper Working together on the global electronic library was presented at the Harvard University conference "Finding common ground" on 30-31 March. This seeks a common vision to avoid duplication and for co-operation in electronic projects. It can be accessed at www.nla.au/nla/stafpapr.
However, co-operation will depend upon the development of infrastructures within countries and between libraries. The basic work of preparation of the national bibliography of each country and the preservation of the national heritage will mean that we can increasingly call upon one another. Naturally we look with great interest at the work being done in setting up systems in Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.
The questions raised of intellectual property rights, copyright and viable systems are numerous.
Will a network of websites and bibliographical centres develop?
Can the structures withstand the demands of the traffic for photocopies and loans?
If I can make a suggestion, even if there is a start made with more information shared, perhaps in electronic form via the Internet, on what the various countries and libraries can offer one another, it will be a beginning.
Australian Libraries with Southeast Asian Collections
Australian National University
Canberra ACT 2600
Homepage : http://anulib.anu.edu.au/lib_home.html
Flinders University of South Australia Library
Adelaide, S A
Homepage : http://www.lib.flinders.edu.au/
Monash University Library
Clayton, Vic.
Homepage : http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/
Murdoch University Library
W.A.
Homepage :
http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/
National Library of Australia
Canberra, A. C. T. 2600
Homepage
: http://www.nla.gov.au/
Northern Territory University Library
Darwin, N. T.
Homepage :
http://www.ntu.edu.au/library/
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