Acta of China Library Group - November 1996

A meeting of the Group was held in Durham on Friday November 8th, 1996.

Present were: Raghu Char, Lesley Forbes, Hiroko Brittain, Zheng Haiyao, David Helliwell, Laura Rivkin, Charles Aylmer, Sue Small, John Moffett, Gill Goddard, Graham Hutt, Hilary Chung, David Arrandale.
Apologies were received from Tony Hyder.

ACTA

1. The minutes were accepted with the deletion of search in the 2nd line of item 4.

2. Matters arising
The British Library had not yet acquired the China MARC records on CD-ROM. Cambridge had acquired the 1988-1995 records and had ordered the earlier set for 1977-87 and proposed to make these available to readers.
The Convener circulated a copy of a (general) article which might help libraries faced with Teaching Quality Assessment (Battersby, R: Teaching Quality Assessement: the role of the subject librarian. Library Review vol.45, pt.5, 1996, pp.26-33).

3. EASL
3i Surprise was expressed at rival serials projects for current Chinese serials.
3ii Most members were also surprised to hear that the Taiwanese CD-ROMS available via the Heidelberg catalogue were (after the 3 year trial period) no longer to be available.
The cost of acquiring CD-ROMS was regarded as prohibitive.
3iii SOAS had already appointed a candidate to catalogue the Morrison Collection. RLIN/CJK records were to be used where possible and the records were to be incorporated into the Libertas OPAC.
3iv A number of libraries had not received copies of BEASL. David Helliwell was to approach J-M Streffer about distribution.

4. Inter-library lending
4i. Copies of Verna Yu's list of current Chinese serials at BLDSC had been received by a no. of members.
4ii. As a result of the increased price of inter-library lending from abroad via BLDSCand the enthusiastic remarks about the inter -library lending service administered by the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, the Convener was asked to write to the Head of the East Asian section of the Staatsbibliothek to establish on what terms and conditions members of the Group might participate in the scheme.
4iii It was however incumbent on readers themsleves to check the on-line catalogues now available, particularly those of SOAS and Cambridge (and now of Oxford), before submitting inter-library loan requests.

5 Automation
5i The JISC-funded project to make Oxford's Chinese records available online had been successfully completed. A demonstration of this was given after the meeting. It was necessary to purchase an appropriate FEP with which to view them. Unionway was thought to be the most suitable at present and particulalry useful in view of its CJK capabilities.
5ii Durham intended to use RLIN/CJK records in its integrated INNOPAC database. It was hoped that Chinese records could be displayed in the vernacular in about 3 years time.

6. Current Chinese Serials
The project to compile a list of current Chinese serials in British libraries had made little progress. It was proposed to make enquiries about a host which would allow members to key in their own holdings.

7. Hiroko Brittain stated that BLDSC intended to levy a [[sterling]]2 consignment fee for oriental materials chosen from lists circulated by BLDSC.

8. Tony Hyder and David Arrandale were re-elected to the posts of Treasurer and Convener respectively.

9. The next meeting was to be held at the University of Westminister on Thursday 8th May.

David Arrandale

Convener
email: d.arrandale@leeds.ac.uk
11/11/96