| It wasn't the fact of missing out on the minus 6 degree frosts in Canberra, nor the promise of whales breaching off North Beach in the early mornings, but "Asia reconstructed: from critiques of development to postcolonial studies," the 16th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, (http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/conferences/asss/) which was ably hosted by the University of Wollongong from 26-29 June 2006 promised, as ever, a smorgasbord of discipline-related delights. And it certainly did not disappoint. The official opening by Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir AC, CVO, Governor of New South Wales, whose personal links with both Asia and Australian academia are well known and widely respected, set the tone of the conference. Meanwhile, the warm welcome to delegates by the representative of the local traditional owners and the enthusiasm of the Mayor of Wollongong for the event, followed by a virtuoso premiere Balinese dance performance, a gamelan recital and then the annual general meetings of the South Asian, Japanese, Chinese, Indonesia and Vietnam studies associations eased delegates into the business end of the conference. While the number of concurrent panels was a definite challenge (up to 12 at any one time!), this also reflected the depth of scholarship in Australian Asian Studies which was being showcased. Subjects ranged from "The Role and Future of Asian Studies" through "Meiji-Taisho Girls Reading Girls" to "Youth and Chinese Identity", "Labour Migration", "International Students in Australia" and "The Islamisation of the Dayak peoples of Kalimantan". Delegates were in turn entertained, inspired, challenged or edified by the breadth of talent which the organisers had managed to assemble. Nor were the panels lacking in interest for serious bibliophiles. Besides the excellent displays and booths mounted by representatives of the Asia Bookroom, a variety of academic publishing houses and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure representatives, the conference was dotted with a succession of book launches (Tim Allender's Ruling Through Education - the Politics of Schooling in the Colonial Punjab; John Kahn's Other Malays: Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in the Modern Malay World; Special Edition of the Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies; Amarjit Kaur and Ian Metcalfe's Mobility, Labour Migration and Border Controls in Asia to name but a few) and other objects worthy of the librarian's attention. The second day of the conference featured two sessions which focused more clearly on library-related issues. The first bore the intriguing title of "Managing research materials in the digital environment, or, One day your PDFs will be obsolete and you need to know what to do about it." While PDFs were in fact mentioned, the focus was more on the strategies institutions such as the ANU and the ANL were adopting to ensure that issues such as access, preservation, relevance and cross-platform compatibility were addressed. Adrian Burton, project leader in the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (http://www.apsr.edu.au) outlined his team's efforts to promote excellence in digital repositories and the linkages that have been developing between institutions across Australia in the area. I presented an overview of the ANU library's experience in digitising works with an Asia-Pacific focus over the past decade ( http://anulib.anu.edu.au/subjects/ap/digilib/) including the expanding Chinese Digital Archive 1966-1976, the Giles Family Albums and King George V's Tiger Shoot in Nepal, 1911. All presenters emphasised the challenges and opportunities which faced both librarians and academics alike in the new environment which the digital age has created. The afternoon session, chaired by Peter Jackson and entitled "Building Research Collections for the New Asian Studies" concentrated more on the increasing diversity of sources which are being used by the contemporary academic and the challenges this presents to the custodians of such sources. Cultural Revolution period multimedia, 20th century underground Japanese gay ephemera and contemporary Southeast Asian popular music were discussed as presenting unique challenges both in terms of collecting as well as storage, cataloguing and preservation. Both sessions drew a healthy crowd and stimulated much interest during the sessions and continuing conversations through the remainder of the conference. Apart from the formal activities, it was a pleasure to catch up more informally with old and new colleagues, including Amelia McKenzie, Andrew Gosling and Tieke Atikah from the National Library, as well as colleagues in our respective disciplines from across the country and overseas. Newman Yan and his colleagues from CNKI hosted a dinner at a local premier Chinese restaurant which offered an opportunity for those of us able to attend to explore the development of the China Academic Journals full-text database, its related Century Journals project which the ANU library has recently purchased and other digitising projects which the organisation is undertaking. If there was one regret, then it must be that not more library professionals were able to make it. Gatherings like this are excellent opportunities for our small community to swap experiences and catch up in person with developments outside the confines of our immediate vicinity and it would have been good to see more colleagues attending. That said, it was also refreshing to get a feel for how each of our respective specialties within the Asian Studies arena are shaping up academically and how we as library professionals can continue to contribute in a meaningful way to the overall health of that enterprise. |