National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 58| August 2002


Asian Studies Conference in the Apple Isle

Asian studies librarians at ASAA in Hobart (left to right) Magdalen Lee, University of Sydney; Bick-har Yeung and Michelle Hall, University of Melbourne; and Andrew Gosling, National Library

Asian studies librarians at ASAA in Hobart
(left to right) Magdalen Lee, University of Sydney;
Bick-har Yeung and Michelle Hall, University of
Melbourne; and Andrew Gosling, National Library

 

For the first time since its formation in 1975 the Asian Studies Association of Australia has held its biennial conference in Tasmania. The venue was the Grand Chancellor Hotel with magnificent views of Hobart’s waterfront. This was ASAA’s 14th Biennial Conference, and was entitled ‘After Sovereignty: Nation and Place’. It was organised by the School of Asian Languages and Studies at the University of Tasmania, and held from 30 June to 3 July 2002. Despite the fears of those attending from warmer climates, Hobart was enjoying quite mild and sunny weather. Even Mount Wellington, which towers over the city, had only a light dusting of snow on its summit.

The most talked about topic at the conference was the ASAA’s newly published report Maximizing Australia’s Asia Knowledge: Repositioning and Renewal of a National Asset (ISBN 0 9580837 0 3). This is also accessible at www.uws.edu.au/social/asaa/report.pdf. It is the first major review of Asian Studies in Australia since the 1989 Ingleson Report, and has found that despite a number of important achievements, the study of Asia in universities and schools has fallen short of targets set in earlier reports to government. Its major conclusions were that the forces of globalisation will lead Australia to interact increasingly with the countries of Asia; that Australia’s long-standing Asia-knowledge base is in jeopardy and that a careful program of renewal, making imaginative use of new technologies, will allow Australia to reposition, extend and deepen its Asia knowledge.

Unlike the Ingleson Report, which looked at many aspects including libraries, Maximizing Australia’s Asia Knowledge has been prepared with limited resources and does not specifically deal with libraries. Nevertheless the report, with its detailed conclusions and recommendations on Asian language and related studies, will be of great interest to libraries with Asian holdings.

Conference sessions covered many topics including Australia and Asia; nationalism, regionalism and separatism; the Internet and E-Governance in different Asian nations and gender issues.  Many of the panels were inter-regional. Despite the apparent decline in South Asian studies noted in Maximizing Australia’s Asia Knowledge there was a strong South Asian stream to the conference. Indonesian, Chinese and Japanese studies were also strongly represented. 

During the conference several affiliated bodies including the Chinese Studies Association of Australia, the Indonesia Council, the Japanese Studies Association of Australia and the Korean Studies Association of Australasia, held their annual general meetings. All four will be having conferences in 2003 and it is planned to have library sessions at each.
—Andrew Gosling

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