Minutes - Sixteenth annual conference of EASL

The sixteenth annual conference of EASL was held at the Sinologisches Seminar der Universität Heidelberg from 11th to 14th September 1996. The meetings were chaired by Katharina Thölen (main session) and Thomas Hahn (automation).

Present were:

Jana Srajeová (Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague)
YU Dong (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)
Basilia Fang (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek)
Katharina Thölen (Universität Zürich)
Hubert Delahaye (College de France, Paris)
Brigitte Auby (Bibliothèque Interuniveritaire des Langues Orientales, Paris)
CHENG Ying (Centre Chine, Paris)
Marc van der Meer (Sinologisch Instituut, Leiden)
Andreas Mixius (Universitätsbibliothek und TIB, Hannover)
Johann Michael Streffer (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin)
Renate Schmidt (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin)
Diane Strobl (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München)
Thomas Hahn (Universität Heidelberg)
Annette Specht (Universität Heidelberg)
Thomas Kampen (Universität Heidelberg)
Bénédicte Héraud (Sinological Serials in European Libraries Project, Heidelberg)
Michael Leibold (Universität Würzburg)
Li-yun Banck-Hsieh (Moderne China-Studien, Universität zu Köln)
Anne Labitzky-Wagner (Landesspracheninstitut NRW, Bochum)
Matthias Kaun (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel)
Bénédicte Vaerman (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
Bent Pedersen (Det Kongelige Bibliotek, København)
Koen Wellens (Universitetsbiblioteket i Oslo)
Sue Small (School of Oriental and African Studies, London)
Graham Hutt (British Library, London)
David Arrandale (Brotherton Library, University of Leeds)
Charles Aylmer (Cambridge University Library)
David Helliwell (Bodleian Library, Oxford)

Observers:

Urs Widmer (PC-Lab, Bremen)
Heinrich Allers (Goethe-Institut, München)
Karen Smith-Yoshimura (The Research Libraries Group, Inc.)
ZHANG Aizhen (China International Book Trading Corporation)
ZHEN Naili (China International Book Trading Corporation
Martin Hanke (China Buchservice, Hamburg)
Stephan Feldman (Asian Rare Books, New York)
Anja Merdan (Harrassowitz)

ACTA

After some opening words by the Chairman, a short welcoming address was given by Professor Susanna Weigelin-Schwiedrzik.

1 Notices of members

1.1 The new extension to Cambridge University Library for CJK materials is to be named the Aoi Pavilion «C¤««F after the donor. It is expected to open in spring 1998. (Charles Aylmer).

1.2 The Oriental Department of the Royal Library in Copenhagen will move to its new building in autumn 1998. (Bent Pedersen).

1.3 Work has just begun on a new building for the library of Oslo University. It is expected to be complete by autumn 1998. (Koen Wellens).

1.4 The libraries of the China-Europa Instituut and Chinees-Japanse Bibliotheek in Leuven are to be unified. The process will be complete by autumn this year. (Bénédicte Vaermann).

1.5 A new allegro catalogue has been started at the Ostasiatisches Seminar of Zürich University. (Kathy Thölen).

1.6 A new allegro catalogue is about to be started at the Sinologisches Institut of Würzburg University. (Michael Leibold).

1.7 The Robert Morrison Collection of old Chinese books at SOAS is to be catalogued. Hong Kong Government Office Library material has been donated to SOAS, including some 794 volumes of western books, in addition to periodicals. The gift includes a complete set of their information files from the 1960's to 1993, in microfiche form. (Sue Small).

1.8 During the next 2-3 years, the Dunhuang Research Group in Paris is to produce a CD-ROM of Chinese rubbings in all French libraries except the Bibliothèque Nationale. The Pelliot catalogue of Dunhuang manuscripts in Paris has been completed. (Hubert Delahaye).

1.9 Some doubt exists as to the continued online availability of the 25 dynastic histories database outside Heidelberg. The Chairman agreed to seek clarification on this matter.

1.10 Zhonghua Shuju (Peking) is preparing a new facsimile edition of the extant parts of Yongle dadian, and would like to know their location and identity. If you have any, please inform Zhang Chenshi at Zhonghua shuju, 36 Wangfu- jing, Beijing, or inform Frances Wood or Graham Hutt at the British Library, who will pass the information to Zhang Chenshi when he visits in October. (Graham Hutt).

2 Conferences and meetings

2.1 The German colleagues' association (Die Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Sinologischer Bibliothekare) held a large meeting in Wolfenbüttel in May. Important topics of debate included automation and congshu. It has been agreed that henceforth they should meet once a year. (Michael Leibold).

2.2 The French colleagues' association (Sinodoc) continues to meet twice a year. Current issues include a shared acquisition policy in times of budget cuts, and the mounting of all French bibliographic databases on a single server. (Hubert Delahaye).

2.3 Several members attended the EACS conference in Barcelona, at which Professor Rudolph Wagner was elected President. At the conference, the need for co-operation between libraries was emphasised, especially in times of financial stringency. (Thomas Hahn).

2.4 Dierk Hoeppner conducted a successful workshop on allegro parameterisation in Heidelberg in July. Those members present who are using allegro expressed the wish that another such workshop should be held.

2.5 Several members attended last month's IFLA conference in Peking. J-M Streffer reported that the coverage of issues relating to non-Roman scripts had been disappointing.

3 Treasurer's report

A statement of accounts prepared by Tony Hyder was presented, and unanimously accepted. He was thanked for his work.

4 Booksellers' visits

For the first time at an EASL conference, several booksellers came to make presentations at the invitation of Thomas Hahn. Short outlines of their services were given by Zhang Aizhen (CIPTC), Stephen Feldmann (Asian Rare Books) and Anja Merdan (Harrassowitz). Members were able to view their exhibitions throughout the conference.

5 BEASL

5.1 Michael Leibold presented the 9th issue of BEASL, and was congratulated on its successful completion. He was also thanked for his work in obtaining substantial advertising revenue, which had defrayed almost two thirds of the production costs. 250 copies have been printed.

[Please note that the address of one of the advertisers in BEASL 9 has changed since printing: Martin Hanke, China Buchservice, Mattenmoorstraße 7-9, D-21217 Seevetal; tel. +00 49 40 76910727; fax. +00 49 40 7691-728.]

5.2 He announced that owing to other commitments, he was unable to continue as editor. Marc van der Meer offered to edit and produce the next 2 issues at Leiden, and his offer was unanimously and gratefully accepted.

5.3 Arrangements for the mailing of BEASL will continue as before.

5.4 The Secretary will solicit payment for issues 10 and 11, the amount to be fixed in the region of [[sterling]]10 sterling in consultation with the Treasurer.

[The Treasurer has agreed that the price of issues 10 and 11 will remain [[sterling]]10. Payment for both issues will be solicited when issue 10 is mailed.]

6 WWW homepage

6.1 The EASL WWW homepage has now been set up and made available from the Kiel fileserver by Matthias Kaun. After a short demonstration, members expressed complete satisfaction with progress to date and congratulated Matthias on a most professional result.

6.2 Members were encouraged to produce and provide links to their own home pages, and to make suggestions for further enhancements.

6.3 It was agreed that the EASL membership directory might be kept updated most conveniently on the Secretary's own fileserver, and this possibility would be investigated, together with the mounting of minutes of EASL conferences.

6.4 It was also felt desirable that the homepage should point to minutes of the local associations of France, Germany and the United Kingdom.

7 Subject thesaurus

7.1 J-M Streffer announced that the project to compile a Chinese subject thesaurus had had to be abandoned owing to a lack of support from the Staatsbibliothek.

7.2 He was of the view that contributions on this subject at the recent IFLA conference had also been disappointing.

7.3 There was an amorphous discussion on the various issues involved.

8 Local histories

8.1 Thomas Hahn reported that it had proved impossible to proceed with the project to produce a union catalogue of Chinese local histories in European libraries owing to a lack of funds.

8.2 He also reported that Zhuang Weifeng had been unable to get a visa in time to attend the conference.

8.3 After some discussion on the feasibility of the project, its future was left in a state of uncertainty.

9 Periodicals

9.1 EDOCS (European Database of Chinese Serials). J-M Streffer reported that as no contributions to EDOCS had been received since the last conference, there had been very little input into the database. EDOCS had been converted into an allegro database, and the datafiles and searching software would shortly be placed on an FTP server and made available to members.

9.2 SSELP (Sinological Serials in European Libraries Project). Bénédicte Héraud outlined progress to date on this EACS project, and there was a demonstration of the database. As it stands at present, the database contains 4,200 records, representing holdings in Heidelberg, British libraries, the IHEC in Paris, together with a few from the Centre Chine. Attempts would be made to fully incorporate all the data currently in EDOCS.

9.3 It was agreed that progress of both databases would be reviewed next year, and that it the meantime, members should make their serials data available to both parties equally.

10 Exchange of duplicates

Bent Pedersen outlined the various methods by which duplicates might be exchanged. It was agreed that members should co-operate in this matter more actively than hitherto, having in mind the particular needs of colleagues in Eastern Europe.

11 Election of officers

Kathy Thoelen, David Helliwell and Tony Hyder were re-elected to their respective offices of Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer.

12 Next EASL conference

Bénédicte Vaermann invited EASL to hold its next conference at Leuven, and this offer was unanimously accepted. It was agreed that the conference should be held from Wednesday 10th to Saturday 13th September 1997, with the automation session again being restricted to the Wednesday afternoon, and continuing on Saturday morning if necessary.

The Sixteenth EASL Conference closed with an expression of thanks to Annette Specht, Bénédicte Héraud, and Thomas Hahn for their excellent arrangements.

Secretary

Oxford: 24ix96

AUTOMATION

As is now our custom, automation matters were not discussed during the main part of the conference, but at separate sessions on Wednesday 11th and Saturday 14th September. As agreed, only the briefest summary of proceedings is being appended to the minutes of the conference.

1 Online demonstrations of:

RLIN CJK (Karen Smith-Yoshimura)
OCLC CJK (Thomas Hahn)
Cambridge University Library short-title catalogue (Charles Aylmer)

2 Paper on CJK character coding (Urs Widmer)

3 Local reports by:

J-M Streffer (Berlin)
Koen Wellens (Oslo)
Marc van der Meer (Leiden)
Charles Aylmer (Cambridge)
David Helliwell (Oxford)

4 Information on WJ v2.0 & China MARC CD-ROM 1988-98 (Charles Aylmer)