1) Jian Anna Xiong and Liang Ruan (joint proposal)

Lian Ruan is a CALA member and is Head Librarian of Illinois Fire Service Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Jian Anna Xiong is CALA's Membership Committee Chair and Government Information Librarian at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. The grant will help Ms Ruan and Ms Xiong embark a joint research project entitled In Search of Excellence: Chinese American Librarians in the 21st Century. The project, which consists of a survey to CALA's current members and a study of the status and characteristics of Chinese American librarians in the United States, will provide "both quantitative and qualitative data analysis to communicate and promote Chinese American librarianship by providing a picture of the ability of Chinese American librarians and their response to information requests in their organizations. The study findings can be used as a tangible example to help promote Chinese American librarianship and the LIS profession." It will also address "the increasing need to understand Chinese American librarians as one of the largest ethnic librarian groups in American library communities, and renewed interest to demonstrate and prove its critical roles in the Library and Information Science profession." The research result "will help Chinese students studying library and information science as well as Chinese librarians to better fit into American libraries. It will help them expand their job choices, embrace a higher and broader vision in working as minority librarians in America, and thus enhance the integration of Chinese librarians into the American library society as well as add diversity to the society."

2) Yongyi Song

Yongyi Song is Technical Services and Collection Development Librarian at the John F. Kennedy Library of California State University Los Angeles, and serves on CALA California Chapter's executive board. He has published many books and articles on Chinese Cultural Revolution and received a number of national awards including the prestigious 21st Century Librarian Award by the School of Library and Information Science of University of Syracuse. The grant will help Mr Song in two of his research projects: 1) a panel presentation entitled Preserving Chinese History: Digital Resources on China Studies Overseas at the Third International Conference of Institutes & Libraries for Chinese Overseas Studies which he serves as Chair; and 2) the final editing work of an updated version of The Chinese Cultural, Revolution Database, CD-ROMs which he serves as a chief editor. By addressing the panel at the Third International Conference of Institutes & Libraries for Chinese Oversees Studies, he "will share his extensive knowledge and experience with colleagues in other communities and will encourage more librarians to pursue research and preserve historical materials. Such continued efforts to preserve the valuable data on contemporary China are truly praiseworthy and set a fine example for many colleagues in the library profession". The upgrade of the Chinese Cultural Revolution Database"will significantly enhance the database with new sources and technology --many major scholars in the field have already expressed high expectations of this upcoming new edition", and "will provide much more valuable data for historians, scholars, and researchers to study this important historical event in the 20th century".

The Grant will be presented to the recipients on Sunday, June 26, 2005, 7:00-10:00 pm at the CALA Awards Banquet in Chicago Chinatown-Three Happiness Restaurant, 2130 S. Wentworth Ave., Chicago, IL 60616 during the 2005 ALA Annual Conference.

2005 Sally C. Tseng Professional Development Grant Committee

Manuel Urrizola
Head of Monograph & Serials Cataloging, University of California Irvine, Co-Chair

Ying Xu
Humanities Librarian, California State University Los Angeles, Co-Chair

Wenwen Zhang
Director, San Gabriel Public Library, San Gabriel, California

Sally C. Tseng, ex officio