Council on East Asian Libraries

CEAL Committee on Chinese Materials

ACRL Asian, African and Middle Eastern Section

Sunday July 9, 2000

2:00 - 4:00 p.m.

McCormick Place Convention Center

Room N427 B and C

Chicago, IL

From the First Chinese-American Exchange of Publications in 1869:

Review and New Challenges for Chinese Collections in the U.S. Libraries

Join us to celebrate the history of Chinese collections in U.S. Libraries and look toward the future. Our distinguished speakers and discussant will brief us on the history and development of the Chinese collection at the Library of Congress; the gateway project introduced at the University of Pittsburgh for global partnership with libraries in Asia; an exciting NSF Digital Library Project link Chinese collections together, and to motivate all participants for new ideas and projects.

SPEAKERS:

Winston Tabb, Associate Librarian for Library Services, Library of Congress

History and Development of Chinese Collections at the Library of Congress

Rush Miller, University Librarian and Director of the University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh

The Development of Global Partnerships: the University of Pittsburgh Experience

Ching-chih Chen, Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College

Millennium eLibrary for Chinese Studies: Potentials and Problems to be Addressed by A Major NSF International Digital Library Project, CMNet

DISCUSSANT:

Eugene Wu, Librarian Emeritus, Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University

Winston Tabb was appointed Associate Librarian of Congress for Library Services in November 1995, when all library services and programs at the Library of Congress were consolidated under his leadership. In this capacity he manages 53 divisions and offices whose 2,400 employees who are responsible for acquisitions, cataloging, public service, and preservation activities, services to the blind and physically handicapped, and network and bibliographic standards for America's national library.

He served as Acting Deputy Librarian of Congress from 1989 to January 1992, assisting the Librarian of Congress in the overall management of the Library.

Mr. Tabb has been with the Library of Congress since 1972, when he was chosen to participate in the Library's Intern Program for outstanding library school graduates. After completing the internship, he joined the staff of the Congressional Research Service. From 1978-84, he served as assistant chief of the General Reading Rooms Division, whose five reading rooms are the most heavily-used at the Library of Congress. From 1984-88, he was chief of the Copyright Information and Reference Division. In October 1988, he was appointed Director for Research Services.

Mr. Tabb graduated magna cum laude from Oklahoma Baptist University in 1963. He earned a master's degree in American literature from Harvard University in 1964 and another in library science from Simmons College in 1972. He is a member of the Board of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), the Visiting Committee for Harvard Libraries, and the Digital Library Federation Policy Committee. He has represented the Librarian of Congress since 1988 on the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) and since 1995 on the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). He is Vice-Chair of the Professional Board of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), and serves as chair of IFLA's National Libraries Section and of the Coordinating Board for the Division of General Research Libraries. He is the U.S. representative to the G7 global digital libraries project --Bibliotheca universalis-- and represents the Library of Congress on the AACR2 Committee of Principals. He is also a member of the Editorial Board for Alexandria, the Journal of National & International Library and Information Issues. From 1994 to 2000 he served on the Board of the Soros Foundation - Open Society Institute Network Library Program, which makes grants for library advancement in the countries of the former Soviet Union.

In 1998, Mr. Tabb was awarded a top honor of the American Library Association, the Melvil Dewey Medal, for creative leadership in, and distinguished contributions to, the national and international library communities.

Rush G. Miller is University Librarian and Director of the University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh. The University Library System is comprised of the Hillman Library and 15 departmental libraries on the Oakland campus. He also has major responsibilities for coordination and planning in information technology for all campuses. In addition, he holds a joint appointment as Professor in the School of Information Sciences at Pitt. Prior to that, he was Dean of Libraries and Learning Resources at Bowling Green State University; Director of the Library at Sam Houston State University, and Director of Library Services at Delta State University; and as Assistant Professor of Library Science at the University of Mississippi.

Miller is active in professional associations including the Association of Research Libraries, the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries and others. He has pioneered efforts to develop innovative global resource sharing, particularly with libraries in China. His scholarly record includes a number of publications on history, diversity, management theory and practice, the globalization of libraries, and staff development.

He received the BA in History from Delta State, the M.A. and Ph.D. in Medieval History from Mississippi State University, and the MLS from Florida State University.

Ching-chih Chen, Professor and former Association Dean, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College is a sought-after international consultant and speaker. An author and editor of 29 books and more than 150 articles on topics related to new information technology applications and management. She is also the founding Editor-in-Chief of Microcomputers for Information Management (1984 -1996), and produced the award winning interactive videodisc and multimedia CD entitled The First Emperor of China. Since 1987, she has been the Chief Conference Organizer of 11 successful International Conferences on New Information Technology (NIT) in different parts of the world – Bangkok, Singapore, Guadalajara (Mexico), Budapest, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, Alexandria (VA, USA), Pretoria (South Africa), Hanoi (Vietnam), and Taipei, Taiwan. The 12^th, NIT ‘2001, will be held in Beijing, China at the Tsinghua University in celebration of the university’s 90^th anniversary.

In more than a decade, she has been advocating the global digital library concept by linking distributed digital libraries and museums all over the world together via the global network. The new International Digital Library Program of the National Science Foundation has just approved a major award to support her CMNet (Chinese Memory Net): US-Sino Collaborative Research Toward A Global Digital Library in Chinese Studies. In February 1997, she was appointed by President Clinton to his Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) under a special presidential Executive Order. In addition to PITAC, she has also served as a member of PITAC/Subcommittees on the Next Generation Internet, and Information Technology Initiatives, and PITAC’s Subgroups on Digital Divide, Digital Libraries, and International Issues. She co-chair the PITAC Subgroup on International Issues.

A Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science, she has received numerous awards and honors including American Society for Information Science’s Outstanding Information Science Teacher (1983), the Library Information Technology Association’s LITA/Gaylord Award for Achievement in Library and Information Technology (1990) and LITA/Library Hi Tech Award (1994), the American Library Association’s Humphry Award (1996), the Association of Library and Information Science Educators’ first National Faculty Award (1997), and many others. She was the first recipient of CALA’s Distinguish Service Award.

Eugene Wu is the Librarian Emeritus of the Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University. He was the librarian of the Harvard-Yenching Library from 1965 to 1997. Prior to his 32 years at Harvard University, he was the Curator of the East Asian Collections at Hoover Institution, Stanford University from 1961 to 1965, Curator for Chinese Collection from 1959 to 1961, Assistant Curator for Chinese Collection from 1956 to 1959, and Chinese Cataloger from 1951 to 1956.

Mr. Wu received BA in History and MLS from the University of Washington in 1950 and 1951, Ph.D. (all but dissertation) in History and Political Science from Stanford University in 1965.

He is the author of 4 monograph books and more than 25 articles in library publications and journals of East Asian studies. During his tenure at Harvard-Yenching Library, under his leadership, the Library has undergone tremendous growth and change. Its holdings have more than doubled, rising from 407,424 volumes when Wu took over in 1965 to nearly 900,000 volumes in 1997. Important resources have been added, such as the Meiji Microfilm Collection -- 16,000 reels of microfilm of all the books known to have been published in Japan from 1868 to 1912. A Vietnamese collection was begun in 1973, which now comprises more than 10,000 volumes. And thanks to new funding, the Library is within sight of achieving a long-sought goal -- the computerization of all its records in both Romanized and vernacular scripts.

Among those collections where Mr. Wu paid a great attention to build over the years, he is particularly pleased with the Library's Tiananmen Archive, comprising approximately 1,200 handbills, posters, and pamphlets from the 1989 pro-democracy movement and subsequent massacre. Among these materials are about 3,000 photographs, including many of the "big character posters," that appeared in Tiananmen Square at this time, giving vent to ideas, criticisms, and frustrations of people involved in the movement.

Attracted by the wealth of material the Library has collected, ranging from the ephemera of the Tiananmen Archive to the ancient classics of traditional learning, numerous scholars from around the world now visit the collection.

Mr. Wu was awarded the U.S. Medal of Freedom in 1946; Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Washington, 1974; Distinguished Service Award, Association for Asian Studies, 1988; Sojourner’s Award, Chinese Historical Society of New England, 1996; Distinguished Service Award, OCLC, 1998; and Distinguished Service Award, Council on East Asian Libraries, Association for Asian Studies, 1998.

After his retirement, Mr. Wu moved to California. His current plan is to write a political history of China in the 1920s, concentrating on relations between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. He also hopes to write a history of the Harvard-Yenching Library.