Acta of China Library Group - May 1996

A meeting of the Group was held at Orbit House on Friday 10th May, 1996.

Present were: David Helliwell, Frances Wood, Graham Hutt, Charles Aylmer, Verna Yu, Raghu Char, William Liu, Sue Small, Gill Goddard, David Arrandale.
Apologies were received from Tony Hyder, Laura Rivkin, John Moffett

Announcements: It was noted that further cuts in scientific periodicals had been made at the British Library.
The Bodleian had considered acquiring CD-ROMs of the People's Daily & the China Daily but had concluded that the search methods were inadequate.

ACTA

1. The minutes were accepted as correct.

2. Matters arising
It was reported that the British Library had ordered the National Library of China's MARC records on CD-ROM for the period 1988-1995. Searching methods and ways of downloading them were as yet not known.

3. The NCOLR meeting had been mainly devoted to descriptions of the fund-raising activities of the Britsh Library. Arising from the observation of the outgoing Chairman that Inter-library lending was likely to reappear on the agenda in the coming years, comment was made of the increased cost of international Inter-Library lending (now over [[sterling]]30) via BLDSC.

4. The RLIN CJK demonstration was discussed. It was recognised that as a Union catalogue it seemed an effective tool. Convertibility of (Chinese) records remains a problem.
The lack of contact of RLG with major databases in the Far East gave rise to concern. As did the delay in cataloguing new materials.

5,i. As regards the impending TQA assessments, Leeds and Sheffield mentioned that the lack of Japanese & Chinese materials (respectively) raised problems over drafting of appropriate documentation.
5,ii. Acquisitions policies were referred to briefly but some institutions regarded these as internal documentation.
5,iii. Detailed documentation to help readers use the collections appeared to be in short supply (except perhaps in the University of Westminster).

6. The CLG list of current serials was discussed. The possiblity of using the major part of the Group's funds to employ assistance to enter the holdings of SOAS and Cambridge, should matching funds be found elsewhewhere, was the subject of inconclusive discussion.

7. The next meeting would be held in Durham on 1st November (subsequently deferred till 8th).

The meeting ended at 17.05.

David Arrandale

Convener
24/10/96
email: d.arrandale@leeds.ac.uk