Number 55, June 1998

 

APPROVAL PLAN

The Senate Library Committee recently approved the Libraries' proposal to implement approval plans for acquisitions and collection development.

Approval plan is a method of selecting and acquiring library materials whereby the library provides a vendor with a detailed profile of its requirements in specific areas plus budgetary limits, the vendor will then select and supply materials regularly within the parameters indicated.

Some of the advantages of an effective approval programme include savings in faculty time and effort in current imprint selections, speed of delivery, cost reductions, and more consistent development of the collections.

Subsequent to the meeting, teaching departments were contacted and the majority expressed their desire to participate in the programme. Since approval service is new to our Library, we have decided to phase-in approval implementation. Our tentative schedule is:

Departmental designated library representatives, as experts in the discipline, will be invited to participate in the design of the initial subject profiles. As construction of an accurate and specific profile is essential to ensure relevancy of materials supplied, the Libraries would appreciate active involvement of teaching departments to enable effective implementation of the approval plan. This programme will be evaluated after an experimentation period.

 

LIBRARY COLLABORATION

On 23 March 1998 the Joint Documentation and Information Centre on Overseas Chinese Studies of the University of Hong Kong Libraries and Jinan University Library was officially opened in Guangzhou by Professor S. T.H. Chan, former Pro-Vice-Chancellor, and Professor Lai Jiang-ji, Vice-President of Jinan University. Also present at the ceremony were Professor S.L. Wong, Director of the Centre of Asian Studies, Dr Kan Lai-bing, the Librarian, Mr Lawrence Tam, Deputy Librarian, Dr Ma Tai-loi, Deputy Librarian and Fung Ping Shan Librarian, and Mr Lau Yee-fui, Assistant Librarian, as well as guests from other libraries and government officials.

The Centre is the fruition of a collaborative project between the two universities, and is the first of its kind in the region. It has been established to collect documentation and information for research on overseas Chinese throughout the world.

Presently there are four databases covering government statutes, the two libraries holdings on this topic, biographies, and full-text articles. These will be further developed before access is made available.

The University of Hong Kong Libraries is actively acquiring materials published in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan and other foreign countries relating to the overseas Chinese community. With support of the HKU Foundation for Educational Development and Research, the Libraries has contributed financially towards the purchase of computer hardware and software for the Centre and the acquisition of overseas Chinese materials.

 

INTER-LIBRARY LOANS

Libraries Systems Department staff have successfully created a new programme and database for the Inter-Library Loans Department. The old programme, written for DOS, only allowed one user at a time, doing one task at a time. The new programme written for Windows 95 allows concurrent users, each of whom may run several tasks simultaneously, both within the ILL program, as well as outside it in other applications, such as Netscape. Financial data for other departments can now be sent in machine-readable form, as well as in print. As a result, we expect work flow and efficiency will be greatly improved for the department.

 

NEW ELECTRONIC SERVICES

FT Discovery for Asia

Provides web access to key business information including company reports, country analysis, industry profiles, international news coverage and real time newswires. Some of the major sources include Financial Times, Washington Post, Hong Kong Standard, Le Monde, and Newsweek, as well as Company Sources and Industry Analysis.

PCI

PCI Web is an electronic index to the contents of over three thousand five hundred periodicals in the humanities and social sciences from the first issues up to 1990/1991 with every article being indexed.

World News Connection

World News Connection (WNC) is an online news service which offers an extensive range of English-language news and information. The material in WNC is provided to the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), a U.S. government agency. The information is obtained from full text and summaries of newspaper articles, conference proceedings, television and radio broadcasts, periodicals, and non-classified technical reports. Generally, information is updated within 48-72 hours from the time of original publication or broadcast.

How to Access

From our Libraries Homepage <http://www.hku.hk/lib> go to <Libraries Electronic Resources>.

Other New Electronic Databases

1. Reference

2. Science

3. Electronic Journals

 

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

The Special Collections has made good progress in the last few months on the Table of Contents Project for Hong Kong materials held in the Hong Kong Collection. Bibliographic data, including author, title and page numbers, of a total of 36,813 papers belonging to 1,036 conference proceedings, have been added into the Libraries' online catalogue. This will enable users to retrieve citations of conference papers by author, title and keyword from the OPAC or WebPac on the Libraries Homepage.

The Photocopying and Microfilming Unit has recently finished microfilming the 78 volumes of pre-1943 Wah Kiu Yat Po on loan from the South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. The microfilm copy is made up of 87 reels covering the period from 5 June 1925 to 14 February 1942. With the completion of this microfilming project, the University Libraries have become the sole library with a complete run of Wah Kiu Yat Po.

Seven cartons of publications, mostly government publications and working papers, were received from the Centre of Asian Studies, the University of Hong Kong.

 

CHINESE OR JAPANESE TITLE

ACCESS

Chinese or Japanese titles found in Western language publications are also input into the bibliographic records so as to allow users to access records by both Western Language titles as well as Chinese or Japanese titles when available.

 

SPACE LIBRARY

The closure of the SPACE library has made it necessary for the bibliographic as well as item records for books once held by the SPACE Library to be deleted from our OPAC. Accordingly these titles have been removed from the HKUL catalogue.

 

STAFF NEWS

Dr Ku Kam-ming, BEng (Hons), Ph.D PolyU, Assistant Computer Officer, was promoted to Computer Officer w.e.f. 1 May 1998.

Mrs Chu Bow Mei-yuk, Library Assistant III, is due to retire on 30 June 1998 after over 24 years of service with the Libraries.

 

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Mr Y.C.Wan, Special Collections Librarian, gave a talk on "An Overview of Hong Kong Government Publications" to a group of 20 teacher librarians participating in the Refresher Training Course for Teacher Librarians, organized by the Education Department and the School of Professional and Continuing Education, HKU, on 6 March.

 

CONFERENCES AND VISITS

Mr Thomas Hung, Ms Luncinda Wong and Ms Antonia Yiu attended the Digital Libraries Asia 98 Conference in Singapore on 17-20 March. The theme of the Conference was "The Digital Era: Implications, Challenges & Issues" which focused on successful developments since the emergence of digital libraries and the challenges for librarians in the dynamic knowledge economy. The three staff members also visited the National Library of Singapore and the National University of Singapore Library.

Mr David Palmer, Systems Librarian, attended the IBM Asia Pacific Digital Library Consortium Meeting in Tokyo on 25-27 March. Site visits to Keio University and Osaka's Ethnological Museum with Consortium members and visiting National Science Foundation (USA) scholars provided many perspectives on various digital library projects now underway.

Deputy Librarian, Dr Ma Tai-loi attended the annual meetings of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) and the Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL) in Washington, D.C., 25-29 March. As the incoming President of CEAL, Dr Ma chaired the plenary session. Together with other CEAL representatives, he participated in a discussion with Library of Congress senior staff and OCLC and RLG representatives on the implementation of pinyin as the standard Chinese romanization. He was a speaker at an AAS/CEAL panel to celebrate the 70th anniversary of LC'S Chinese Section. During this trip, he also gathered information on overseas Chinese in America.

Ms Heung Wing Ngao and Ms Cheung Mo Ching attended the Joint Symposium on Library and Information Science Studies, held in Guangzhou and co-organised by the Information Management Department of Zhongshan University and Chinese Association of Library and Information Science Education, on 29 March - 2 April.

A number of library professional staff attended the Fourth Hong Kong Web Symposium held at the University on 9-11 April.

Dr Ma Tai-loi and Mr Lau Yee-fui of the Fung Ping Shan Library were in Beijing during 19-23 April to meet with officials of the State Council's Office of Overseas Chinese Affairs, and the National People's Congress's Overseas Chinese Affairs Committee concerning activities of the Joint Documentation and Information Centre on Overseas Chinese Studies. They were met, among others, by Mr Li Daoyu, former Chinese Ambassador to the United States and now Deputy Chairman of the said Committee. They also visited the National Beijing Library, the Capital Library, the libraries of Peking University, Tsinghua University, China University of Political Science and Law, and the Institute of Legal Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as well as the Ministry of Culture's Library Department.

Mr Lawrence Tam, Deputy Librarian, attended the Annual Meeting of the Pacific Neighbourhood Consortium in Taipei on 15-18 May. Subsequent to this meeting on scholarly communications, he also visited the libraries of Academia Sinica (Taipei), Chengchi University, Taiwan University, and the National Central Library.

VISITORS
Date Visitors/Institutes
March 2, 1998 Delegation led by Mr Song Rongzhen from Tsinghua University.
March 11, 1998 Mr Sun Laixiang, Dean, Office of Academic Affairs and a group of visitors from Fudan University.
March 12, 1998 Validation Team (Professor Susan Dev, Dr Catherine Manthorpe, Mr John Madeley) for the Diploma of Economics Programme from University of London.
March 13, 1998 Mr Fan Ruihe and a group of visitors from Tsinghua University.
March 17, 1998 Mr Peter Yeung, Co-ordinator of the Canada-Hong Kong Resource Centre.
March 18, 1998 Mr Tejinder Sibia, Head, Biological & Agricultural Sciences Reference Department, Shields Library, University of California, Davis.
March 19, 1998 Professor Yang Na, Research Librarian and former Deputy Director, National Library of China.
March 26, 1998 Professor Shen Weipin, Associate Professor from Shanghai Jiaotong University.
April 1, 1998 Delegation led by Mr Cai Yuping , Deputy Section Chief, from Shanghai Jiaotong University.
April 2, 1998 Visitors from the Rotary - Group Study Exchange (1997-98) led by team leader, Mr Hanspeter Borgwarth.
April 3, 1998 Dr Huang Dafeng, President's Secretary of Zhongshan University.
April 15, 1998 Accreditation visit by the Hong Kong Society of Accountants for the B.B.A. Programme in Accounting & Finance.
Mr Tony Ong, Deputy Director, and Ms Catherine Su Koenig, Librarian, Kwang Hwa Information & Culture Centre.
April 16, 1998 Visitors from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines belonging to the Hong Kong Explorers Programme sponsored by the Hong Kong Tourist Association.
April 18, 1998 Delegation led by Professor Wu Shiming, Deputy President from Zhejiang University.
April 20, 1998 Mr Karl Lo, Director, International Programs, University of California, San Diego.
April 21, 1998 Ms Long Ruying, Academic Service, and visitors from Shenzhen University.
April 30, 1998 Professor Wang Jinfen and a group of visitors from Huaqiao University.
Mrs Dinora Lampreia and Mrs Alda Cabral of Macau Scientific and Cultural Centre, and Mr Raymond Wong Kwok-keung, Director of Macau Library & Information Management Association.
May 5, 1998 Professor and Mrs Larry N. Vanderhoef, Chancellor of the University of California, Davis, Dr and Mrs Charles J. Soderquist (UC Davis Alumni Association), and Dr Robert Kerr (Director of Alumni Affairs).
May 7, 1998 President James Downey of the University Waterloo.
Professor Wang Zong Min , President and visitors from Northwest University.
May 13, 1998 Professor Yau Yuanqun and a group of visitors from Hong Kong & Macau Office of Republic of China.
May 14, 1998 Mr Zhao Xiong, Deputy Librarian and Ms Li Jinghua, Information Services Librarian from Tsinghua University Library.
May 19, 1998 Ms Jacqueline Coats, Acquisitions Librarian, University of Chicago Library.
May 20, 1998 Delegation from China Agricultural University led by Professor Zhang Senwan, Dean of the Library, East Campus.
May 20, 1998 Professor Liang Kun Qin and delegates from Yunnan University.
May 21, 1998 Mr Xiang Xinshi, Vice Chairman of the University Council, and visitors from Xian Jiaotong University.
May 22, 1998 Ms Judy S. Lu, Area Specialist, Asian Division, Library of Congress, U.S.A.
May 26, 1998 Professor Jao Tsung-I, Chinese University of Hong Kong and Mr Paul Wong Shek Wah , President, Tsung Tsin Association.
May 27, 1998 Mr Yau Buntong and a group of visitors from Zhongshan
May 28, 1998 Mr Deng Yuansheng, Director of External Affairs, Hubei Provincial Education Commission.
May 29, 1998 Mr Ho Chuk Ping, President, Shun Teh Association and Chairman, Hong Kong Chinese Artists Association; Mr Chan Fan , President, Shun Teh Association; and Professor Lau Chun Tsao, Malaysia Academy of Art.
Professor Mao Xing-yun, Vice President, Shanghai University, Professor Yang De Guang, President, Shanghai Teachers University, and Professor Zhao Yansheng, Vice President, Fudan University.
June 8, 1998 Professor Madeline Y. Hsu, Asian American Studies Department, San Francisco State University.

 

In Memorial

The University Libraries was deeply grieved to learn of the death of Mrs Dorothea Scott, its former Librarian (1950-1960) and of Mr Bernard Kwan, one of its longest serving staff members (1964-1996). Both passed away peacefully on 2 May and 18 May respectively.

In many respects Mrs Scott was a pioneer librarian in Hong Kong. She was responsible for planning and designing the University of Hong Kong Libraries' first permanent premises now called the Main Library's Old Wing. Mrs Scott was also credited for founding the Hong Kong Library Association, Hong Kong's own professional organisation without which librarianship in Hong Kong would not have developed the way it did.

Mr Kwan headed the Book Orders Department for 7 years (1970-1976) and subsequently the Cataloguing Department for 20 years (1976-1996). He held several offices with the Hong Kong Library Association in the eighties. Mr Kwan was and still is popularly known for his unassuming manners and caring nature. He had won the friendship of many of his colleagues for his readiness to give a helping hand and to lend a sympathetic ear to those who sought his advice.

Both Mrs Scott and Mr Kwan will be sadly missed but fondly remembered for all the contributions they made.