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While Australian and NZ libraries have generally been funded well, libraries in Asia have been traditionally under-funded. Chinese libraries, apart from those serving government-annointed prestigious research institutions in areas like science and technology limp along with stacks of photocopied and pirated versions of the real thing, a legacy of the relative poverty of the Chinese state. But the Information Age is starting to change all that. Countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and Malaysia are making strong claims to IT leadership in the region, using all the tagline tricks of the marketor such as the "Intelligent Island", and Malaysia's mouthful of jargon "Multi-Media Super Coridoor" (blissfully usually referred to simply as the "MSC".) Whatever the pitch, the fundamentals are the same. We are moving from the Industrial Age where excellence in industrial processes decided the winners to the Information Age where quality in Information Management calls the shots. However librarians are finding a new competitor for their traditional expertise as information managers. These are the information technologists, the computer and internet-savvy, who have "expert power" when it comes to managing the technology of databases, cataloguing, and information retreival. The technology is already superb and has even greater potential, but needs the wisdom of older minds who are trained and have built a lifetime of experience in making sure people get the information they need. Librarians are quickly responding to the challenge and are making sure they get their share of the information age financial largesse. Of course the title of one of these journals, "Collection Building" seems a bit out of date. It comes from a time when librarians went into the profession becuase they liked collecting - stamps, butterflies, books whatever... the profession has come a long way, and the library of the future will be smaller with less dark and dusty aisles and banks of computer terminals and printers instead. The collections will be mainly remotely hosted, and Ms Smith can put away her feather duster used to dust off the books that nobody ever read. Some excellent articles in these journals both for the librarian and information professional and the general reader... First of all you may want to view the review of Euromonitor's Directory of Asian Companies (1997) listing approximately 5,000 companies in China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Then in a general article on the implications of digital libraries generally, John W Berry in an article called Digital libraries: new initiatives with worldwide implications from Collection Building; 15: 4 1996; pp. 21-33 notes in the abstract...
Now onto our own region, where there is some excellent information on China... Chinese business information: a review, by Jo Drew, (Library Management; 16: 5 1995; pp. 67-74), plots the changes which have taken place in China's international and trade activities in the last 20 years. Gives an overview of China's information industry; the relationship between government and trade associations; and Chinese business information sources. Reviews sources of business information, in hard copy and online format, which are used regularly by the business community wishing to enter or expand in the Chinese market. Winnie Lee in Chinese organized crime: a pathfinder, from Collection Building; 17: 4 1998; pp. 173, provides some guidance on building a collection on Chinese organized crime - first a definition of it and then details of some of the resources which could be included in a collection in the areas of: primary texts, general works, encyclopaedias and dictionaries, films, newspapers, periodicals and Web sites.
An article from Malaysia by Zaiton Osman, Carole Ann Goon, and Wan Hajrah Wan Aris, entitled Quality services: policies and practices in Malaysia (Library Management; 19: 7 1998; pp. 426-433) reports on research undertaken because:
Moving on to Australia, Management changes facing librarianship in Australia, by Maxine Rochester and Fay Nicholson (Library Management; 19: 5 1998; pp. 333-338) reports on five challenges for leadership and management skills identified by the Karpin Report, "Enterprising Nation". These were: to develop a positive enterprise culture; to upgrade the capabilities of the vocational training and education sector, capitalising on the talents of diversity, best practice management development and achievement of best practice. Each challenge is related to Australian librarianship in the 1990s and relevant issues for management education and professional development discussed. How to measure how well your information resources reflects the needs of your customers? Mark L Grover in Large scale collection assessment from Collection Building; 18: 2 1999; pp. 58-66 notes:
An important responsibility of collection development libraries is to ensure that what is being collected is appropriate for the university's curriculum and research needs. Unfortunately the large number of techniques that have been developed to measure collections work better with small college collections. As libraries grow and the range of library materials increase, many of these methods have proved to be inadequate. This study explores the use of statistics from the National Shelflist Count Project to gather enough valid statistical information to adequately assess large research collections There are many more specialised articles to download this week. See you next week when we review the next selection and focus on structural engineering. That should be a challenge...
See the left sidebar for searches of related material on the Asia Pacific Management Forum, Anbar Management Intelligence, book databases, Web and news databases. In particular you may want to visit Information Professionals Asia. Some books (direct link to Amazon.Com) that may be of interest to this week's subject:
Parliamentary Libraries and Information Services of Asia and the Pacific: Papers Prepared for the 62nd Conference, Beijing, China, 25-31 August 1996 |
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