OCLC CJK Users Group 1992 Annual Meeting

Saturday, April 4, 1992

Pullman Highland Hotel

Washington DC, 20007

(Continental Breakfast provided)

Minutes

The chair of the Group, Eugene Wu, opened the meeting at 8:00 a.m. by welcoming those present (51 members representing 28 institutions).

Executive Board report

The Chair introduced the members of the Executive Board: karl Lo, James Cheng, Teruko Chin, and Joy Kim. The minutes of the November 1991 Executive Board meeting have been distributed earlier. Mr. Wu reported that the Program Committee was formed at that meeting, with James Cheng as its Chair. He further mentioned that, as an action committee, the Program Committee has the most important responsibilities, namely, to identify and implement programs important to the membership of the Users Group. He said that the Program Committee consists of all heads of the institutional members of the Users Group, as well as the members of the Executive Board. If the head position of the institutional member was vacant, the official OCLC liaison of that institution was asked to appoint a substitute. Mr. Wu said that a question had been raised at the Program Committee meeting held the previous day, as to whether the members of the Executive Board, if they are not the head of the East Asian library at their institution, should also serve on the Program Committee. To answer this question, he referred to Section E, Article 1 of the Bylaws which states, "the Program Committee, composed of the members of the Executive Board and perhaps additional members appointed by the Chair...". This clearly indicates that the Executive Board members, whether they are head librarians or not, are to be included on the Program Committee.

Mr. Wu then briefly summarized the major topics discussed at the November 1991 Executive Board meeting, including the issues of database expansion, relationships with other groups, etc. The next Executive Board meeting will take place in the Fall of 1992 at OCLC in Dublin, Ohio. Mr. Wu also reported that he, representing the Executive Board, protested OCLC's decision to cease CJK tape exchanges with the Research Libraries Group (RLG) through the Library of Congress. Subsequently, OCLC and RLG reached an agreement to exchange tapes directly, without LC as intermediary.

A discussion on the functions of the Users group and the Updates group followed. Mr. Wu clarified the functional differences between these two groups by referring to the November 1991 Executive Board meeting minutes, p. 4, to wit: "the [Updates Group], organized directly by OCLC, will be concerned mainly with technical matters, while the [Users Group] will concentrate on policy questions and program oriented activities." Hisako Kotaka (OCLC) pointed out that the Updates Group is an annual report forum, rather than a body or entity. Since the memberships of both groups largely overlapped, Mr. Andrew Wang (OCLC) suggested to cease the Updates Group entirely, and instead, to incorporate the annual report by OCLC staff into the program of the Users Group meetings as a regular feature. A show of hands indicated that 26 people supported the merger of the two groups, while 13 preferred to keep the two groups separate, as they are.

There also was a discussion of the different roles of the Program Committee and of the Executive Board. Mr. Wu reiterated that the Executive Board is to provide leadership for the entire Users Group by establishing policies and direction for the group's activities, while the Program Committee is an operating arm to the group to implement programs directed by the Executive Board.

Bylaws Amendments

The proposed change in Section D, Article 2 was unanimously adopted. The amended Bylaw now reads: Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Member-at-Large... (letters in italic added).

The motion to change the name of the group to OCLC EAST ASIAN LIBRARIES USERS GROUP was not carried.

The motion to change the name of the group to OCLC EAST ASIAN LIBRARIES GROUP was not carried.

Andrew Wang agreed to seek the advise of OCLC's legal counsel as to the legal implications on the use of "OCLC CJK Users Group" as the Group's name.

Program Committee Report

The Chair of the Program Committee, Mr. James Cheng, said that representatives from 32 institutions had attended the Program Committee meeting held on the previous day. Topics discussed were:

1. CJK Plus: Andrew Wang explained the main features of the upcoming new system. Loading National Central Library (NCL) Tapes: the Committee recommended that OCLC pursue enhancement of the quality of the records before loading.
   Japan MARC: The Committee advised OCLC to pursue the issue of loading National Diet Library MARC records, and to actively seek funding sources for this project.
   Cooperative Analytical Cataloging of Large Sets: A task force was formed to survey the field, decide what should be analyzed, and then recommend which libraries should be given the responsibility for providing the analytics. Mr. Cheng himself will chair this task force.
   Retrospective Conversion: a task force was formed to survey the current status of conversion activities and the future plans of individual libraries, to develop strategic cooperative plans, and to explore funding possibilities. Members of the task force are: Karl Lo(Chair), Eugene Wu, Joy Kim, S. K Liang, and Min-min Chang.
   

2. 
   

A general discussion on these high priority projects followed, with emphasis on funding sources, strategic planning for grant writing, development of a CJK OPAC, and enhancement of the database. James Cheng will form a task force on cooperative cataloging of large sets with analytics, and Karl Lo will work on the recon survey.

OCLC Reports

Mr. Wang reported on the status of the OCLC-CJK Plus system. He stated that the field test was scheduled to begin in mid-June or early July, and to last for three months. OCLC will fix problems reported by the test libraries following the conclusion of the field test, and will officially introduce the new system in November 1992. (The starting date has since been delayed until September). Phase two of the CJK Plus development will be the move to Prism, by the end of 1993. Since Prism supports keyword, Boolean, and subject searches, CJK searching capabilities on OCLC will be greatly enhanced. CJK350 will continue to be supported for one year after the introduction of CJK Plus.

Mr. Wang gave some statistics on what was in the CJK database in January 1992 (575,000 CJK records including those only in roman alphabet, 370,000 records containing CJK characters). He also stated that OCLC will make institutional CJK statistical reports on a quarterly basis.

Mr. Wang gave a historical summary of the OCLC-RLG record exchange program, and apologized for the way the recently proposed change in this program was handled. He reported that OCLC has now signed a direct exchange agreement with RLG, resulting in a better arrangement. Since there would be no money or a third party involved, more records would be coming into the database more frequently. Mr. Wang further stated that, statistically, RLG has loaded more unique CJK records from OCLC than OCLC has from RLG under the record exchange program. OCLC does not load an RLIN-CJK record when there is a matching CJK record already in the OCLC database, in order to avoid duplication in the online union catalog.

Regarding the OCLC-National Library of China's cooperative recon project involving NLC's holdings of Republican Era (1911-1949) publications, Mr. Wang reported that, the project staff had, to date, created approximately 5,000 records. Funded by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Project is proceeding well. OCLC has applied for additional grants from The National Endowment for the Humanities, and is expecting to hear from NEH soon ("this month")

Regarding the question of Japan MARC records, Mr. Wang stated that OCLC is interested in loading them. However, any institution wishing to load these National Diet Library records must sign an additional contract with Kinokuniya, NDL's agent. No agreement between OCLC and Kinokuniya has yet been reached.

Mr. Wang stated that OCLC was chosen as the host database for the CONSER project. He stressed that CONSER policies are enforced by LC, not by OCLC. CJK CONSER guidelines were established by LC.

CJK CONSER

Mr. John Levy, Automated Operations Coordinator, Serial Record Division, Library of Congress, made the following presentation on the CJK CONSER project:

From October 1991 to date, approximately 400 CJK serial records have been created. The monthly MARC distribution tapes contain roman information only. Additional programming is required for CJK records distribution, and for this reason, CJK records will have a separate distribution service.

CJK CONSER policy was published as Appendix 0 of the CONSER Editing Guide.

There are different categories for CJK CONSER membership, and CONSER members automatically become CJK CONSER members. While full membership requires rigorous evaluation of the collection and cataloging quality, affiliated membership is granted more liberally to libraries wishing to add CJK characters only. OCLC cannot issue enhancement authorization for serials format to non-CONSER members.

There being no other business, the meeting was adjourned, at 10:30 a.m.

(Recorded and respectfully submitted by Joy Kim)