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[Chinese Year of the Ox]

LIB-CHINESE
Listserv for Chinese Information Processing in Libraries

During the Seminar on Chinese Information Processing in Libraries, held January 22-23, at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (a brief report of the conference is attached below), the meeting resolved to establish a list to encourage ongoing discussion and action. The HKUST Library, as requested by the meeting, has established a listserv named "Lib-Chinese".

The Lib-Chinese mailing list was officially retired in September 2007.

The Lib-Chinese list is archived at http://library.ust.hk/lib-chinese/

REPORT ON THE SEMINAR ON CHINESE INFORMATION PROCESSING IN LIBRARIES

The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Library sponsored a Seminar on Chinese Information Processing in Libraries, held January 22-23, 1998. The seminar attracted over 200 participants from the United States, Taiwan, Singapore, Mainland China and Australia. The meeting brought together researchers, software developers, vendors, and end-users, to participate in meaningful dialogue to give direction and impetus for ongoing and future developments.

Professor Ching-Chun Hsieh from the Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, was our keynote speaker. He opened the conference by highlighting his research on a Glyph database system, which would resolve the missing character problems in Chinese Information Processing. The response was enthusiastic.

In the next two days, a series of relevant, high-quality papers were presented by the assembled researchers, product developers and librarians. Attendees became increasingly involved in the discussion sessions. The response and interaction of the delegates attending this conference were truly remarkable.

From this exchange may come several cooperative strategies to resolve the existing problems and chart new directions for Chinese Information Processing. Most of the participants felt strongly that this Seminar should become an annual function, so that up- to-date developments can be disseminated efficiently. The closing session generated some lively discussion with regard to future directions and who should be responsible for taking the lead.

The delegates also reached two major resolutions: First, that HKUST's University Librarian, Min-min Chang, will write on behalf of the group to the Library of Congress and the OCLC Online Computer Library Center about the conclusions of the meeting and the directions the group wishes to pursue. Specifically, the meeting called for CJK support in the LC and OCLC authority files; and for the adoption of the CCCII character set as the CJK standard. Second, that the HKUST Library will establish an online discussion list, composed initially of the SeminarUs attendees, to facilitate ongoing dialogue on this critical issue.

The HKUST Library has played a key role in the development of Chinese processing in library systems. In 1990 the Library worked with Innovative Interfaces for the development of the first truly bi-lingual library system that provides comprehensive capability in Chinese in all system components.

Since that beginning, Innovative has marketed their multi-lingual library system all over the world, including all the universities in Hong Kong, along with many sites in China, Taiwan, Singapore and Australia.

Although an immensely complex and daunting task, the HKUST Library believes strongly that finding a solution to Chinese information processing is the responsibility of the library profession and should transcend geographic and national boundaries. We hope this Seminar and the ongoing online dialogue will continue to influence future developments in Chinese Information Processing.

Details of the Seminar, including many of the papers and presentations, are available on the Library's web server at http://library.ust.hk/scip/.

last modified 05 October 2007
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