The 2nd Kyujanggak Workshop for Overseas Korean Studies Librarians

The Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies and the Korea Foundation organised the 2nd Overseas Korean Studies Librarian Workshop in Hawaii on 27-28 March 2011 at the Outrigger Waikiki on the Beach Hotel. The workshop was held just prior to the AAS conference and the CEAL meeting. About twenty-five Korean Studies Librarians attended the workshop from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States.

The workshop distributed material in a 178 page book (ISBN 9788996271826) pictured here:

The first day’s topics covered a variety of subject areas:

• “How to understand the differences in historiography between Korean and international scholars” by Prof. Tae Gyun Park
• “Current situation and problems in Korean language: focusing on historical linguistics” by Prof. Hyun Hee Lee
• “Recent trends and challenges in Korean Hanmun literature” by Prof. Jong Mook Lee
• “Issues in cross-cultural communication on Korean Studies: focusing on the cases of translation and religious studies” by Prof. Sem Vermeersch

The second day’s topics were related to libraries and collections:

• “The formation process of Kyujanggak collections” by Prof. Sang Chan Lee
• “The current situation and problems of Kyujanggak Academic Information Service” by Sook Hee Park
• “On training junior Korean Studies Librarians” by Jude Yoonlim Yang
• “Discussions on the future planning: collective subscription of Korean Studies E-resources” by Task Force on Korean Studies E-resources
• “McCune-Reischauer & ALA-LC Korean Romanization” by Hyoungbae Lee
• “Discussions for the launch of KoCa (Korean Cataloging Wiki)” by Erica S. Chang

Lectures and discussions were all in the Korean language.

 
The 2nd Kyujanggak Workshop

The workshop was much shorter than usual, but it proved very useful to this Librarian of Korean Studies. I greatly appreciated the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies and the Korea Foundation for providing three days’ lodging and meals.

The first day of the CEAL meeting

In addition to the workshop, I attended the 1st day of the Council of East Asian Libraries (CEAL) meeting on 29 March 2011.

The CEAL meeting started with 2011 OCLC CJK User Group meeting at 9 am in the Hilton Hawaiian Village to consider future directions for the Group. The meeting reported the OCLC CJK Membership Survey 2011 Results.[1]

In the afternoon, the session started with CEAL Plenary I: Business[2], which brought members up-to-date with CEAL matters. The CEAL Plenary II: Program[3] had three presentations: “Electronic bridges for East Asian Research: the scholar’s perspective” by Evelyn Rawski, “Cooperation in constricting times – models and prospects” by James Simon, and “Seeing through brown eyes, not blue: the changing perspectives of libraries local and global” by Paula Mochida.

Next the Committee on Public Services (CPS) Program[4], chaired by Eiko Sakaguchi, had four presenters. The first presenter was Anchi Hoh from the Library of Congress on “Take champagne out of the bottle,” about resource sharing policies and perspectives, research data sharing, sharing digital preservation methods, and shared digital access, retrieval and users.

The second presenter was Jidong Yang from University of Michigan Libraries. His topic was “E-Books in East Asian languages: what we need to know as academic librarians”. He talked about making eBooks and listed samples, such as Google Books, Super Star, APABI Digital Library, AIRITI Books from Chinese, KINDAI Digital Library, Japan Knowledge, Koten Business Series from Japanese, and KSI E-books from Korean.

The third presenter was Suzie Kim, PhD candidate of the University of Maryland, on “Competing constructivism in 1930s East Asia: addressing needs for digital collaboration,” about art history.

The fourth presenter was Ryan James from the University of Hawaii at Manoa on “An assessment of the legibility of Google Books.” He explained that he randomly selected fifty Google Books, and had looked at the first fifty pages of each book. His pre-publication information can be found at http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/15358

After Q&A, the session finished around 6 pm.

Most of us attended the 2011 CEAL Fellowship Dinner which was held at Seoul Jung Korean Restaurant at 7 pm. Walking from the day meeting place to the restaurant, I passed in front of the U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii, where there was an exhibition on the Korean War.

 
Exhibition of the Korean War

At dinner, I met other Korean librarians and Korean databases vendors. We exchanged some ideas for improving Korean database services.

The Asian Collection in Hamilton Library, the University of Hawaii at Manoa [5]

I visited the Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii at Manoa during lunch time of the first day of the CEAL meeting, with Mrs Erica S. Chang, Cataloguing Advisor Librarian at University Hawaii at Manoa.

The Asian Collection collects materials published in and about the countries of East, South and Southeast Asia. The Collection’s reference staff consists of specialists on China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Exhibition at the Asian Collection

When I went to the fourth floor, the exhibition on Asia welcomed me.
Turning left from the fourth floor lift, the user can see the Reference Service desk.

The Reference Desk, the Asian Collection

I toured around the fourth and third floors which have Asia-related materials. Especially, I checked on Korean materials on shelf. Printed materials such as book and periodicals are shelved all together integrated with other East Asian materials according to the Library of Congress (LC) Classification.

The Asian Collection area

I came down to the first floor which has a desk for ‘Information & Reference: business, humanities, social science’ as well as reference materials, the main lobby, microforms collections, the Library Shop display cabinet and Business Office, and Circulation.

The Asian Collection area was quiet because it was University break time and most East Asian Librarians were attending the CEAL meeting that day. I only briefly looked at the Asian Collection this time. The Asian Collection appeared to have a lot of space for users.

Remark: Images in this report are courtesy of the Author.

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