1994 Annual Meeting

 
 

OCLC CJK Users Group 1994 Annual Meeting

Saturday, March 26, 1994

Essex South Conference Room

Westin Hotel, Copley Place

Boston, MA


(Continental Breakfast provided)

Minutes

The Chair of the OCLC CJK Users Group, Karl K. Lo, opened the meeting at 8:00 a.m. by welcoming those present (about sixty to eighty members of the Group).

The Chair extended a special welcome to the guests attending the meeting: Debby Lai (Join Computer, demonstrating the laptop Join program), Beatrice Ohta (Library of Congress), Helen Wang (Metro Life Services), and Mr. Lin (Shanghai Fudan University).

OCLC Staff Report


Andrew Wang thanked all the members of the Group for their support during the past year. He emphasized the importance of the pinyin-Wade-Giles software that can be used to retrieve records from the Online Union Catalog (OLUC) and presented a plaque of appreciation from OCLC to Karl Lo, creator of the program. The plaque was signed by K. Wayne Smith, President of OCLC.

Mr. Wang and Hisako Kotaka made reports on the continuing expansion in the OLUC database of CJK records and on the upcoming advances in OCLC CJK technology. Problems in funding projects like the Chinese Republican Era (1991-1949) bibliographical records are being resolved by Dr. Bob Hayes (Special Assistant to the President, OCLC). The technical aspects of conversion of foreign MARC records into USMARC was mentioned by Hisako Kotaka when the report turned to the 330,000 Waseda University Library records converted by Kinokuniya. It was agreed that the continuing refinement of search strategies and other technological improvements would solve the problems created by the differences between foreign MARC systems and the USMARC system.


Program Committee Meeting


1. Cooperative Analytical Cataloging


James Cheng reported on the project of the cooperative cataloging of analytics. Federal funding for a cataloging project was not forthcoming and James suggested the Task Force seek funding from private foundations. Eugene Wu reiterated the importance of this project and suggested the OCLC list compiled at Indiana University and the RLIN list from the previous year be combined and added to so that the TF chair would have an up-to-date list. It was decided that Abraham Yu will contact the six libraries that have volunteered to work on this project with the revised list and publish the results of these libraries' choices for analytical cataloging.


2. Cooperative Retrospective Conversion

a. Task Force on Retrospective Conversion report Daphne Hsueh began her Task Force report by recalling the work of the earlier TF in surveying East Asian collections' holdings requiring conversion into machine-readable records and the charges to the 1993 Task Force to develop a strategy for conversion, to recommend a reasonable technical standard for conversion, and to explore and identify funding possibilities.
Ms. Hsueh emphasized the benefits to be accrued if retrospective conversion of the Harvard-Yenching Library holdings, the University of California at Berkeley East Asian Library holdings, and the University of Washington East Asia Library holdings goes ahead. She also discussed technical standards and funding possibilities.
b. Harvard-Yenching Retrocon Project
Eugene Wu described the beginning of Harvard-Yenching Library's retrocon project of 17,000 Korean-language records. This lead to a discussion of various approaches to secure funding for such project. The U.S. government agencies and Congress, foundations both here and in East Asia, and state governments were some of the possible grantors mentioned.


3. Proposal for Training in the Use of OCLC's Epic and FirstSearch

Ms. Shizuko Radbill spoke about the use of OCLC's FirstSearch and Epic for reference service and collection development and suggested having a preconference workshop at the next annual meeting in 1995. Andrew Wang said the service, begun three years ago, had proven to be very popular; there were over 5,000 libraries using it currently. A member of the audience declared that, since training was available locally, there may be no need for a preconference workshop.


4. Problems in East Asian Name Authority Control

Abraham Yu recited the long list of improvements in both hardware and software made by OCLC in the area of East Asian record creation. He went on to mention that only 30 to 40 percent of the personal name headings found in the Online Union Catalog (OLUC) have corresponding Library of Congress (LC) authority records and that they are accessible only through the romanized search key system. He recommended that the LC CJK name authority file should be updated to include the names in the OLUC file with vernacular data added to the romanized records and made accessible through vernacular search keys as well as the romanized keys. The members approved of these suggestions in general, while commenting on some of the difficulties involved in establishing names based on dialects and created in different geographical areas. Both Beatrice Ohta of LC and Andrew Wang of OCLC agreed to follow up on this problem.


General Membership Meeting


Chair Karl Lo expressed the member's desire for more time for discussion during the meeting. He made the following housekeeping announcements: Abraham Yu is the chair of the Program Committee for this upcoming year, Shizuko Radbill is the chair of the Membership Committee and Treasurer of the Users Group, Ed Martinique is Recorder for this upcoming year.

It was proposed that the bylaws be changed to state that the Vice Chair automatically is appointed the Program Committee Chair. Further proposed changes in the bylaws, it was decided, should be considered by a Bylaw Revision Task Force. The members approved appointing Abraham Yu as the Group's representative to the Cooperative Cataloging Council. A call for new business was responded to negatively.


  1. 1.Annual Report

The Chair pointed out the many advances in CJK-language bibliographic database management in the past few years and the important role the OCLC CJK Users Group played in those advances. He extolled OCLC for the improvements in technology they created and the expansion of the Online Union Catalog (OLUC) through adding new members and promoting retrospective conversion.

Mr. Lo described the growth on a global basis of CJK-based technologies into the economic and social areas. The ever-decreasing costs of CJK technology will, he stated, afford an ever-broadening use of that technology among the general public. He exhorted the Users Group members to encourage the popularization of CJK-based technologies throughout their own institutions and beyond to public libraries, science libraries, and other potential users.
The discussion about CJK name authority records was continued when Eugene Wu stressed its importance and thanked Abraham Yu and Beatrice Ohta for their contributions. One of the members present suggested the Group send a written proposal to the National Coordinated Cataloging Operation (NACO) about this problem.


The previous format of keeping separate the Program Committee meeting form the General Membership meeting was discussed and it was decided to return to the older format.


2. Membership Fees
After a brief discussion dealing with the perceived need for membership fees to fix the actual membership of the Group, it was decided not to institute a fee system.

3. Future Directions
Andrew Wang predicted a bright future for new functions in the OCLC system with the migration to PRISM, Internet access to the OLUC, pinyin-Wade-Giles convertability for downloading and card production, support for vernacular batch processing, and more functions provided by commercial companies. He also mentioned the Library of Congress' intention to use OCLC facilities to catalog monographs after a six-month evaluation; new users like the University of California, Davis and Waseda University; the current file of Japan MARC; and the Shenlian Shanghai Union which includes Huazhong Shifan Daxue. The many retrospective conversion projects underway or soon to be underway will mean the rapid growth of CJK records in the OLUC.


At 12:20 p.m. Karl Lo, Chair, adjourned the meeting, thanking all the participants.


(Recorded and respectfully submitted by Ed Martinique)