Rotation of NLC middle managers

According to the policy of middle manager rotation of National Library of China (NLC), I will become Director, Foreign Acquisitions & Cataloging Department on January 1, 2011.

I like my new iPhone 4

Two weeks ago, my old mobile phone (Nokia 6670) did work anymore. I bought a new Nokia (N97mini) and didn't like it. Then, I asked my vendor to change another one (iPhone 4) for me.

I like the functions of iPhone 4, especially the functions of Calendar, iPod, WiFi network, GPS, etc.

OLCC Quality Controller Training in Progress

The Quality Controller Training of the Online Library Cataloging Center (OLCC) began today in Beijing.

As the director of OLCC, I planned the training course several months ago for the improvement of uploaded bibliographic records of the cooperative cataloging consortium. This training course for senior catalogers of member libraries of OLCC will take four days from Friday to Monday.

National Library of China shares its rich collection with libraries worldwide through OCLC's WorldCat Resource Sharing service

http://www.oclc.org/news/releases/2010/201028.htm

NLC Games held today

The Ninth Games of National Library of China began today at the stadium of Renmin University of China.

Today's weather is not very good. All the staff attended the opening ceremony in the rain.

Prof. Yuan Mingdun passed away

Prof. YUAN Mingdun (1928-2010), former chairman of the Department of Library Science, Beijing Normal University, passed away last week. His farewell ceremony was held yesterday at an hospital.

Prof. Yuan was an early researchers in computer languages, library automation and MARC formats.

National Standards for CNMARC Format in Progress

The two China national standards for CNMARC bibliographic and authorities formats began early this year.

They are supposed to be based on the newly revised UNIMARC formats (bibliographic format, 2008, and authorities format, 2009).

I am chairing the drafting of the authority format, and Mr. WANG Dongbo is chairing the revision of the bibliographic format.

The translation of the UNIMARC Authorities Format is about to be completed. I hope the job could be done in the next year.

Lea Salonga and Miss Saigon

I finally found a DVD of Miss Saigon from a friend. It is the version of the performance at Fullerton Civic Light Opera on September 16, 2005. It is the only one I can find with the full stage performance of Miss Saigon, but I don't like the actors very much.

Some months ago, I got a DVD The Heat Is On: The Making of 'Miss Saigon', which describes the first performance of the musical in 1989, with Lea Salonga playing Kim. However, The Heat Is On contains just some pieces of the whole musical, and I cannot get a general idea.

Lea played Éponine in the Les Misérables: The Dream Cast in Concert in 1998. I like her very much, even more than the roles of Fantine and Cosette.

Long holiday for the National Day

Today is the second day of the long holiday for the National Day (October 1).

The long holiday is a good opportunity for me to recover from intensive and busy work, enjoy life with family, and find time to do something left behind.

IFLA MulDiCat released

IFLA just released MulDiCat - Multilingual Dictionary of Cataloguing Terms and Concepts.

National Librarian of Australia to retire this week

I just know from NLA that Jan Fullerton, Director-General of National Library of Australia is going to retire this week:

Director-General Jan Fullerton to retire

A staff of NLA told me that this Friday (September 24) will be her last day in NLA.

The position of Director-General has just been advertised so it will be some time before the new Director-General is appointed.

5th China-North America Library Conference held today

Today is the 101th anniversary of National Library of China.

The 5th China-North America Library Conference is held in Beijing during September 9-10, 2010.

WANG Wenzhang, Vice-Minister of Culture, ZHOU Heping, National Librarian of China, and Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian of Library of Congress, made speeches at the opening ceremony.

Ukrainian President visited National Library of China

Today, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych (Віктор Янукович) visited National Library of China and donated Peresopnytsia Gospels (Пересопницьке Євангеліє) to the library.

NLC System maintenance began last Sunday

National Library of China began its maintenance of the Aleph500 system last Sunday. The purpose of the maintenance is to update all records in the subject database with data from the 2nd edition of the Classified Chinese Thesaurus, and make batch changes of corresponding subject fields of the bibliographic records.

The maintenance will be finished on Thursday (September 2).

Fifth Edition of Chinese Library Classification published

Fifth Edition of Chinese Library Classification published today by National Library of China Publishing House.

Please see the following details in Chinese:

http://www.nlcpress.com/cn/BookDB/BookDetail.asp?BookID=3945

NLC began submitting Western records to OCLC

National Library of China (NLC) began submitting bibliographic records for monographs in Western languages to OCLC.

Since the signing of the agreement between NLC and OCLC in 2008, NLC has submitted 2.3 million bibliographic records for Chinese monographs to OCLC WorldCat database.

NLC began to use OCLC Resource Sharing platform for interlibrary lending early this year.

In August 2010, NLC submitted about 1 million bibliographic records for Western languages to OCLC to be uploaded to WorldCat database. Some NLC holdings are already displayed in OCLC records.

The batch conversion and uploading work is done by Online Library Cataloging Center (OLCC) under National Library of China.

I am very glad, because I am the director of OLCC, which is a Chinese counterpart of OCLC.

New edition of Chinese Library Classification to be published soon

The fifth edition of Chinese Library Classification (CLC) is to be published next month by National Library of China Publishing House.

First published in 1975, CLC is revised regularly, with the editorial office hosted by National Library of China.

The last edition (fourth edition) was published 11 years ago in 1999.

The revision work of CLC began in 2007, with the editorial board consisting of experts from all around China.

In January 2008, the editorial office (5 full-time staff) became one section of my department, i.e. Chinese Acquisitions & Cataloging Department.

I am very glad that CLC5 will be published very soon. It will be an important event in Chinese library community.

9 cataloging-related Chinese translations of IFLA papers uploaded

I organized 9 volunteers for the Chinese translation of IFLA papers for Cataloguing, Bibliography and UNIMARC sessions. They have been uploaded to the IFLA websites at the following address:

http://www.ifla.org/en/conferences-sessions/216

with the following details:

• 编目组(Cataloguing Section)

  • Using relator codes in connection with accesspoints instead of quoting statements of responsibility - the Danish implementation / HANNE HØRL HANSEN (DBC, Copenhagen, Denmark) = 与检索点一起使用责任方式代码而不引用责任说明——丹麦的实践 / 中文翻译：王彦侨（中国国家图书馆）
  • Bibliographischer und universeller Zugriff: Schriftliche historische Quellen und Werke der fiktionalen Literatur in FRBR / FRANK FÖRSTER (Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel, Kiel, Germany) = 书目和普遍获取：史料和虚构作品的FRBRoo应用 / 中文翻译：王璐（中国国家图书馆）
  • Identifiers: bridging language barriers / JAN PISANSKI and MAJA ŽUMER (University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia) and TROND AALBERG (University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway) = 标识符：跨越语言的障碍 / 中文翻译：陈宁（中国国家图书馆）
  • Incorporating multilingual bibliographic records into library databases: the case of Lesotho / 'MABAFOKENG MAKARA (National University of Lesotho, Maseru, Lesotho) = 把多语言书目记录并入图书馆数据库：以莱索托为例 / 中文翻译：刘雅（中国国家图书馆）
• 书目组(Bibliography Section)
  • Bibliography of Serbia - free online edition / VESNA INJAC (National Library of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia) = 塞尔维亚书目——免费联机版本 / 中文翻译：刘伟（中国国家图书馆）
  • Content analysis of open access manuscripts in National Library and Archives of Islamic Republic of Iran (NLAI) / FATHOLLAH KESHAVARZ, SAEEDEH AKBARI-DARYAN and AFSANEH TEYMOURIKHANI (National Library and Archives of Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran, Iran) = 开放存取手稿的内容分析——以伊朗伊斯兰共和国国家图书与档案馆为例 / 中文翻译：吴晓静（中国国家图书馆）
  • PDF, CSV, RSS and other acronyms: redefining the bibliographic services in the German National Library / LARS G. SVENSSON and YVONNE JAHNS (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Frankfurt, Germany) = PDF，CSV，RSS和其他缩略词：重新定义德国国家图书馆的书目服务 / 中文翻译：中文翻译：朱青青（中国国家图书馆）
  • Open access to national bibliography: Polish approach / MAGDALENA KRYNICKA (National Library of Poland, Warsaw, Poland) = 开放存取国家书目——以波兰为例 / 中文翻译：刘佳（中国科学院国家科学图书馆）
• UNIMARC
  • UNIMARC in The European Library and related projects / NUNO FREIRE (National Library of Portugal, Lisbon, Portugal) = 欧洲图书馆和相关项目中的UNIMARC / 中文翻译：李恺（首都图书馆，北京）

Speech at LSC Annual Conference

I just gave a presentation at the "Information Resource Development" session of the Annual Conference of the Library Society of China, focusing on hot topics in information resource development and sharing, and the practices of National Library of China.

I will leave for Beijing this evening.

LSC Annual Conference to be held next Monday

The Annual Conference of the Library Society of China is to be held in Changchun, Jilin Province, next Monday.

There will be more than 800 participants from all around China, and about 80 from National Library of China.

I will have a 30-minute speech at the Resource Development and Sharing session, and lead about 20 colleagues from my department, the Chinese Acquisitions & Cataloging Department.

I am sorry, Gothenburg!

I am sorry, Gothenburg!

I will not attend the World Library and Information Congress (WLIC), or IFLA General Conference, in Gothenburg, August 9-15, 2010.

Of course, I will not attend the meetings of the Standing Committee of the Cataloguing Section and the ISBD Review Group.

I have organized the Chinese translation of 9 papers of the conference, among which 4 for the Cataloguing Session, 4 for the Bibliography Session and 1 for the UNIMARC Session. Most volunteers are my colleagues from the National Library of China, and two are from other libraries. I would like to express my sincere thanks for their efforts for IFLA.

CNONIX Working Group Established

CNONIX Working Group was established on July 14, 2010.

CNONIX is a Chinese localization of the international standard ONIX, which is for the information exchange of book publishing and trade industry.

The working group is sponsored by GAPP (General Administration of Press and Publication) of the government, organized by a secretariat under China Publishing Group Corporation.

The working group is divided into Steering Subgroup, Expert Subgroup, Drafting Subgroup and Secretariat.

I am one of the members of the Expert Subgroup. The expert subgroup members are mainly from publishers and booksellers and responsible for the review of the new standard.

OLCC UCS Training Held in Beijing

A training course for UCS system for OLCC is held in Beijing during July 10-11, 2010. 80 trainees from OLCC users and members attend the training.

UCS system is an union library cataloging system developed by Ex Libris specially for Online Library Cataloging Center, National Library of China.

The new system will be put into use in August as a new module of Aleph 500 of Ex Libris.

As the director of OLCC and the chair of the UCS project team, I spent five years for the system. I am very glad to see that the new system will be completed very soon.

30th Anniversary Reunion of Class 7906 of the High School Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University

I. Photos

• 新浪（顾犇） / Sina: http://photo.blog.sina.com.cn/category/u/1230856804/s/253976
• 网易（顾犇） / NetEase (Ben Gu): http://photo.163.com/bgu61/list/#aid=205322510&m=0&page=1
• 网易（顾犇） / NetEase (Joseph Yan): http://photo.163.com/josephyan/list/#aid=205388865&m=0&page=1
• Flickr (Ben Gu): http://www.flickr.com/photos/guben/sets/72157624248405831/

II. Video Clips

• 新浪（顾犇） / Sina: http://you.video.sina.com.cn/a/4157103-1230856804.html
• 优酷（顾犇） / YouKu: http://www.youku.com/playlist_show/id_4622976.html

Second National Conference on Library Cataloging held in Nanjing, May 31-June 1

The Second National Conference on Library Cataloging is held in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, May 31-June 1, 2010. 120 participants attended the conference.

The conference is sponsored by the National Library of China, co-sponsored by Information Organization Committee of the Library Society of China, Nanjing Library and China Library Weekly, and supported by Ex Libris.

Yesterday, Prof. Wang Songlin gave keynote speech, and some experts from various libraries and library schools in China spoke about hot issues in international library cataloging and information organization community.

During the first session of the second day (June 1), about 10 speakers presented their papers for the conference, which are already published in the conference proceedings in May 2010.

Major topics of the conference are: outsourcing, roles of catalogers, ICP, FRBR, FRAD, FRSAD, name authority file, VIAF, Chinese Library Classification, Classified Chinese Thesaurus, SKOS, RDA, etc. Managing Director of Ex Libris China Office introduced the newly development Union Cataloging System of Aleph500 system.

During the first conference in Wuhan in 2006, participants discussed seriously about the unification of cataloging rules in China. The situation has been improved very much.

Both the first and the second conferences is mainly coordinated by me. I spent quite a lot of time for call-for-paper, review of submitted papers and arrangement of presenters. About 10 of my colleagues from the Acquisitions & Cataloging Department volunteered to do all the arrangements for the conference. I am glad that the conference is very successful, and is much better than the first conference in 2006.

OLCC held annual meeting in Nanjing

Online Library Cataloging Center (OLCC) of the National Library of China held its annual meeting in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province.

During the meeting, the Jiangsu Provincial Sub-Center of OLCC was officially established.

Established in 1997 and operated by the Chinese Acquisitions & Cataloging Department of the National Library of China, OLCC have 14 sub-centers and 1160 users.

About 80 participants from 46 member libraries attended the meeting, and technicians from Ex Libris and OLCC showed the newly developed Union Cataloging System especially for OLCC and to be released next month.

I have been the director of OLCC since 2004, and have spent quite a lot of time for the development of the new system.

Children's Library of National Library of China to be opened today

National Library of China will open its Children's Library today. It will end the long-lasting controversy over the issue whether the national library should have a children's library or reading room, and will play a leading role in Chinese library community where children's library services are not well developed.

National Library of China shares its rich collection with libraries worldwide through OCLC's WorldCat Resource Sharing service

OCLC News:

http://www.oclc.org/us/en/news/releases/2010/201028.htm

Herbie Hancock and Dee Dee Bridgewater in Beijing

Herbie Hancock and Dee Dee Bridgewater with the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Ensemble

Forbidden City Concert Hall, Beijing, China

May 11, 2010

Chinese Library Classification at the Final Revision Stage

The final version of the fifth edition of Chinese Library Classification (CLC) is reviewed by experts from major libraries in China. The final revision meeting is now held in Xiamen (Amoy).

CLC was first published in 1975, and is now widely used in almost all libraries in China.

The fourth edition of CLC was published in 1999, and the electronic version of the fourth edition (version 1.0) was published in 2001.

The fifth edition was planned to be published in 2009, but it has been postponed until now.

Second National Conference on Library Cataloging to be held in Nanjing in late May

The Second National Conference on Library Cataloging is to be held in Nanjing during May 31-June 2, 2010. The conference is sponsored by National Library of China and supported by Information Organization Committee of the Library Society of China, Nanjing Library and China Library Weekly.

The first conference was held in Wuhan in 2006, with some topics such as the internationalization of Chinese library cataloging and the unification of cataloging rules. Since then, Chinese library catalogers have been studying latest developments in international library cataloging community, and have reached some agreements on library cataloging rules.

Chinese version of Guidelines for National Bibliographies officially released

The Chinese version of National bibliographies in the digital age : guidance and new directions is just released at the IFLA site:

http://www.ifla.org/en/publications/guidelines-for-national-bibliographies-in-the-electronic-age

with the direct link to the PDF file (800 KB):

http://www.ifla.org/files/bibliography/national_bibliographies_in_the_digital_age-zh.pdf

The original English version is published in August 2009:

National bibliographies in the digital age : guidance and new directions / IFLA Working Group on Guidelines for National Bibliographies ; edited by Maja Žumer. — München : Saur, 2009. — 140 p. : some ill. ; 25 cm. — (IFLA series on bibliographic control ; v. 39 )

and the Chinese translation is done by staff in National Library of China.

Web version of CCT officially released

The Web version of CCT (Classified Chinese Thesaurus) has been officially released. It was developed during 2008-2009, and the trial version was released in June 2009. After an official assessment, it was officially released last week.

The Web version integrated the contents of the printed version of CCT and Chinese Library Classification, and becomes a powerful tool for catalogers in their subject indexing.

The trial free accounts will be valid until June 15.

Please visit the CCT site the have a look:

http://cct.nlc.gov.cn/

Chinese Counterpart of ISO 5127 Published

The Chinese counterpart of ISO 5127 (Information and documentation -- Vocabulary) is published today:

《信息与文献 术语》 (Information and documentation -- Vocabulary) (ISO 5127:2001, MOD)（中华人民共和国国家标准，GB/T 4894—2009，代替GB/T 4894—1985, GB/T 13143—1991）（2009年9月30日发布，2010年2月1日实施）

I am one of the Working Group members during 2008-2009. I am glad to see that the Chinese National Standard is finally published.

Chinese National Standard for Bibliographic Description Released

Today, I received a copy of the new National Standard Bibliographic Description -- Part 1: General, published by Standards Press of China in January 2010.

It is based on ISBD(G) and ISBD Preliminary Consolidated Edition.

The Working Group for the Standard consists of four members:

HU Guangxiang (Chair) (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences),

LIU Xiaoling (National Library of China),

GU Ben (National Library of China) and

SHEN Zhenghua (Peking Universityy Library)

However, the new Standard is also controversial. Some experts think that there is no need for such a counterpart of ISBD(G), because we have already the ISBD Consolidated Edition.

Listening to Evita

I bought a CD "Evita: Music From The Motion Picture" in Frankfurt and listened to the music during my travel. I like it very much, especially the following pieces:

• Oh What A Circus / by Antonio Banderas
• Don't Cry For Me Argentina / by Madonna
• High Flying, Adored / by Antonio Banderas

I am looking for a DVD of the original motion picture. I hope I could borrow one after the holiday.

ISBD RG Extra Meeting held in Frankfurt

ISBD Review Group Extra Meeting is held in Frankfurt during February 4-6, 2010.

Chinese version of FRAD available online

The Chinese translation of FRAD (Functional Requirements for Authority Data) is available on the IFLANET today:

http://www.ifla.org/publications/functional-requirements-for-authority-data

PDF file (700KB):

http://www.ifla.org/files/cataloguing/frad/frad_2009-zh.pdf

The translation is done by Miss WANG Lu and her colleagues in National Library of China.

Forever Sutra

Yesterday, I received a CD from Zhao Cong, a famous yong Pipa player.

The CD is a new collection of classical pieces played by her (with Pipa) and a piano, which includes:

1. Liuyang River;

2. Jazz -- Dvorak's Humoresque;

3. Dance Music of the Yi Tribe;

4. Beethoven's For Elise;

5. Butterfly Lovers, or, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai;

6. Romeo and Juliet;

7. Moonlight over Spring River;

8. Schuberts' Serenade;

9. Old Melodies of Yingzhou -- The Moon High Above;

10. Chopin's Nocturnes.

As one of Ms. Zhao's friends, I have several CD collections by her, which feature the mixture of traditional Chinese music, Western classical music and modern music. I like them very much.

She gave a lecture in National Library of China in March 2009 and had an audience of more than 100 people.

Here is Zhao Cong's blog (in Chinese):

http://blog.sina.com.cn/zhaocongpipa

Chinese version of ISBD Area 0 published

Chinese version of ISBD Area 0 (ISBD Area 0: Content Form and Media Type Area) has just been published:

http://www.ifla.org/publications/isbd-area-0-content-form-and-media-type-area

The PDF file is at the following address:

http://www.ifla.org/files/cataloguing/isbd/area-0_2009-zh.pdf

I just completed the Chinese translation during the long holiday for the New Year (January 1-3, 2010).