National Library of Australia - Gateways>

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 53| October 2001


Shrinking Chinese Card Catalogue

The National Library of Australia’s Chinese card catalogue is rapidly shrinking. Stage one of a major conversion project has reduced the 126 drawers of cards to 73 drawers.

Like other major Chinese collections in Australia, in past years the Library developed substantial arrears of Chinese language works with limited access to scholars and readers. Many older books have been searchable only through a brief entry in the Library’s Chinese card catalogue. These backlogs date from a period of a high rate of acquisition unmatched by staff resources to catalogue the collection fully, and prior to the existence of an automated system capable of managing East Asian scripts.

Stage one of the Chinese conversion project began in March 2000 and was completed in August 2001. It was estimated at the outset that there were about 75 000 title cards in the catalogue with imprint dates from the sixteenth century to 1996 when the Chinese Unit began using the Australian National Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) Service.

Chinese Card Catalogue Conversion Project staff

The aim of stage one was an initial sweep of entries in the Chinese card catalogue to identify matching records in the CJK database and the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN), to add holdings to the CJK system and discard cards. Only categories where a high hit rate was expected were searched, concentrating on imprints since 1980 and Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN) produced cards. At the same time duplicate records and items already on the online system have also been removed from the catalogue.

The recruitment of two staff members allowed the project to proceed under the supervision of an experienced staff member. Initial projections proved to be underestimates as it had been anticipated that 12 000 holdings would be added to the CJK database in stage one. In fact 23 172 holdings have been added to the CJK database and the Library’s own online catalogue.

Stage two of the project has already begun. Entries for the individual titles included in major encyclopedic works (known in Chinese as cong shu) are being checked against the CJK system and RLIN, then holdings are added to the CJK database and cards discarded. Meanwhile the Library’s ceased Chinese serials are also being added to the CJK database. All current titles are already on the system.
—Andrew Gosling

Above: Chinese Card Catalogue Conversion Project staff
From left to right: Lily Li, Xiaozhen Huang, Weining Yu, Irina Chou and Angela Chan

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