European Association of Sinological Librarians EASL
Editors NoteAfter more than a year and with some delay the new BEASL is ready. The delay is due to the somewhat slow income of contributions. The Chinese contributors we had hoped would contribute gave us no positive reactions. Yet we don't want to lament, but happily thank the contributors of this number of BEASL for their effort. After all we think it has become an informative Bulletin. The section on automation is by far not as extensive as in the last years. Maybe the interest in this field has cooled since most of us have by now decided what system to use and are busy implementing it. Much leaves to be said and desired, so we think that the Bulletin will dedicate more space to this topic again in the future. In this context Hubert Delhaye gives an insight on the CJK OPAC of the Instiut d'Extreme Orient. One main notice in the field of automation seems to be that EASL does now have a www homepage. We think it would be desirable to discuss, maybe on the homepage itself, what the future character of BEASL should be and what it cannot be, i.e. the fields of the homepage will naturally take over.
In our section on sinological collections in Europe we have inserted a short
description of several smaller sinological libraries in German-speaking
countries. The information on fields of
special collections etc. should be interesting to all of us in times of reduced
public funds and
better international exchange and cooperation possibilities. We think that such
information
could be exchanged between different European conuntries. We can imagine that
in the next
number maybe the British or French colleagues introduce their "smaller"
libraries thus
institutionalizing this point in the Bulletin. Reports by Lars Laaman on the Beitang Collection and by Cordula Gumprecht on her acquisition tour to China may provide some useful insight and connection in period when book selling rules in China, Hongkong and Taiwan are rapidly changing. A special thanks to Basilia Fang who has given us a long desired tool on Chinese names. Wishing informative and enjoyable reading,
sino001@rzhub.uni-wuerzburg.de; (Ina Asim)
|