OCLC CJK Users Group holds annual meeting

photo provided by OCLC CJK Users Group

The OCLC CJK Users Group Annual Meeting was held March 13 in Boston, Massachusetts.

The meeting featured several speakers in addition to discussion and planning among group members and OCLC staff.

Ching-chih Chen, professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College, and a member of President Clinton’s Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee, gave a motivating talk about "The Coming of Digital Libraries: What This Means to East Asian Scholars and Librarians." In the talk, Dr. Chen challenged East Asian Studies librarians to take advantage of the current digital environment.

Dr. Chen shared her 15-year involvement in East Asian studies and her internationally renowned Project Emperor-I, which, with support from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, resulted in an award-winning interactive videodisk and multimedia CD products titled "The First Emperor of China."

Dr. Chen’s talk led into how technology and humanities have converged during the last decades. With the dynamic development of information technology and the increasingly effective global information infrastructure, use of the Internet and World Wide Web has become commonplace. Information technology has transformed "the way we communicate, deal with information, learn, work, conduct research, govern, do business, health care, etc.," she said.

As to the information’s end, it is now possible for us to realize the "global digital library" and instead of "databases," it is possible to consider "knowledge bases" with real content, Dr. Chen said. She challenged the group members to build efficient and functional "databases," and also to expand their vision of information provision by thinking of the content-based "digital libraries." Finally, Dr. Chen encouraged the East Asian studies librarians and scholars to collaborate more regionally, nationally and globally by sharing their experiences in this new area, and then contemplating the sharing of their valuable resources digitally.

On behalf of Shu-fen Lin of the National Central Library (NCL), Shiny Huang read a paper titled "National New Book Information System and National Bibliographic Information Network (NBINet)."

NBINet provides basic cataloging information on all books registered with ISBN and CIP at the NCL’s ISBN Center. Since its inception in 1989, over 251,000 publications have been registered with the ISBN program, with an average of 2,500 records added each month, and over 100,000 records registered in the CIP program from 5,000 publishing centers. These records are accessible via the Internet or on the SinoCIP CD-ROM, which is updated bimonthly.

In a presentation titled "Chinese Geographic Names: from Wade-Giles to Pinyin," Fung-yin Simpson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, explained that, collaborating with Vicki Fu Doll, she created a Web page to help librarians, CJK catalogers, and library users handle the upcoming Pinyin conversion more effectively.

Using a Web browser, Ms. Simpson demonstrated the project’s Web page featuring five columns for five variations for each geographic name: Wade-Giles, former LCSH, revised LCSH, Pinyin and Chinese script. The Web page also provides related resources on Pinyin conversion information, reference materials, and links to other sites. This Web page is mounted on the OCLC CJK Users Group Web site.

OCLC staff and users discussed the OCLC CJK 3.0 software during a portion of the meeting titled "OCLC CJK 3.0 Experience: Reports from Field Test Sites."

Gary Houk, vice president, OCLC Services, reported on news and major projects at OCLC, CJK services activity, database expansion projects, CJK record growth, CJK Users Group topics, Asia Pacific highlights, and Pinyin conversion issues. Mr. Houk said OCLC is moving toward an integrated Web interface to all OCLC services.

Marty Withrow, director, OCLC Technical Services Development, reported on OCLC’s Arabic Cataloging Project. OCLC, as a global information facilitator, is developing capabilities to support a pilot project to test cataloging of Arabic-language materials, including the Arabic vernacular characters. The Arabic Cataloging Pilot will allow users to search for MARC records, edit records, create and add records that are not found in WorldCat, and download a copy of the USMARC record to the user’s local system. OCLC is in the early stages of planning for the pilot.

Hisako Kotaka gave a report on the new OCLC CJK 3.0 software. After talking about OCLC CJK 3.0 technical issues, Ms. Kotaka said that OCLC CJK 2.11 and OCLC CJK 2.11a will be supported through Sept. 1, 1999. OCLC will end the product life of the old software on March 31, 2000. Ms. Kotaka said OCLC CJK 3.0 enhancement work has already begun.

As the outgoing OCLC CJK Users Group chair, Abraham Yu, University of California, Irvine, opened the meeting with the following acrostic to describe the OCLC CJK program:

• Outstanding and remarkable services
• Comprehensive world-class database
• Low-cost and affordable pricing structure
• Creative, innovative and user-friendly software

--Joy Kim is librarian, Korean Heritage Library, University of Southern California, and the Korean Officer of the OCLC CJK User Group.