I'm pleased that my research partners from across the Pacific Ocean, Dickson Chiu (University of Hong Kong) and Patrick Lo (University of Tsukuba) will be giving a talk at the University of Hong Kong Libraries. Our book is a labour of love (perhaps more labour than love it seems at times).
The genesis of it come from a common theme that we hear too often about the challenges and trials of librarians who face continuously shrinking budgets, increased workloads, and the constant change in information technologies. But as we gradually worked our way through these discussions, we realized that such themes go beyond just libraries, but includes cultural institutions as archives, museums, and to a certain extent, art galleries – what is now more commonly known as a whole as LAMs.
One might ask, why focus on LAMs? We argue that the present convergence is actually a return to traditional unity. These three institutions share epistemological links dating from the “Museum” of Alexandria and continuing through the cabinets of curiosities gathered in early modern Europe. But over time, as these collections expanded, they became more specialized and their storage separated according to the form of information that emerged in around the nineteenth century, and as a result, these institutions professionalized and intellectual societies and educational programs materialized that further crystallized the formal separation. We have come full circle. For us to focus on only one but not the other would be to give an incomplete picture as to the continued merger of LAMs. Our book is thus based on a series of direct interviews with different practicing librarians, archivists, and museum curators across the world who specialize in East Asian collections.
In trying to examine the dynamically shifting role of the cultural institution in the context of managing information, cultural and knowledge exchanges, and collaboration on a global scale, we want this book to serve as a reference guide for students, scholars, researchers, and professionals who manage East Asian collections, and enable them to gain a glimpse of the vast amount of treasures available for their research and other scholarly activities. As LAMs began their histories mainly as collecting institutions with mandates to preserve and make accessible primary sources valuable for researchers, we want to show in this book how we are coming full circle again with the merger of practices and techniques of managing collections across cultural institutions.
When we sought a title for this book, we were careful to live up to the promise of “World’s Leading Librarians, Archivists and Curators.” Of course, it can be a subjective process in labeling who exactly are “leading,” but we strove to select those who are considered experts in their field, those who have published extensively in there area of literature, who have amassed many years of experience in management of their collections, and also those who have won awards or acclamation from their peers. We did not make our selections in haste; we also carefully selected interviewees based on a geographical spread that best represented various countries across the world to justify the global focus of our book. So that is why we went on a journey to interview experts from Berlin State Library, Bavarian State Library, the British Library, the British Museum, the National Library of France, the Vatican Library, the National Library of Denmark, the National Archives of Japan, the National Taiwan Library – just to name a few.
In the context of this book, East Asian collections not only refers to those housed and managed by library, archive, and museum (LAM) professionals who are ethnically of East Asian descent, but also their American as well as European colleagues, who have devoted their careers to safeguarding cultural heritage collections of immeasurable values. We conducted our research using a mixed-methods approach using semi-structure surveys through face-to-face meetings, Skype, and also by email depending on preferred mode of access by our interviewees. Upon completion of transcribing our interviews, we followed up with our interviewees for clarification and approval for publication of the text. We're looking forward to finally having this monograph out and available. Expect a June launch to come.
The genesis of it come from a common theme that we hear too often about the challenges and trials of librarians who face continuously shrinking budgets, increased workloads, and the constant change in information technologies. But as we gradually worked our way through these discussions, we realized that such themes go beyond just libraries, but includes cultural institutions as archives, museums, and to a certain extent, art galleries – what is now more commonly known as a whole as LAMs.
One might ask, why focus on LAMs? We argue that the present convergence is actually a return to traditional unity. These three institutions share epistemological links dating from the “Museum” of Alexandria and continuing through the cabinets of curiosities gathered in early modern Europe. But over time, as these collections expanded, they became more specialized and their storage separated according to the form of information that emerged in around the nineteenth century, and as a result, these institutions professionalized and intellectual societies and educational programs materialized that further crystallized the formal separation. We have come full circle. For us to focus on only one but not the other would be to give an incomplete picture as to the continued merger of LAMs. Our book is thus based on a series of direct interviews with different practicing librarians, archivists, and museum curators across the world who specialize in East Asian collections.
In trying to examine the dynamically shifting role of the cultural institution in the context of managing information, cultural and knowledge exchanges, and collaboration on a global scale, we want this book to serve as a reference guide for students, scholars, researchers, and professionals who manage East Asian collections, and enable them to gain a glimpse of the vast amount of treasures available for their research and other scholarly activities. As LAMs began their histories mainly as collecting institutions with mandates to preserve and make accessible primary sources valuable for researchers, we want to show in this book how we are coming full circle again with the merger of practices and techniques of managing collections across cultural institutions.
When we sought a title for this book, we were careful to live up to the promise of “World’s Leading Librarians, Archivists and Curators.” Of course, it can be a subjective process in labeling who exactly are “leading,” but we strove to select those who are considered experts in their field, those who have published extensively in there area of literature, who have amassed many years of experience in management of their collections, and also those who have won awards or acclamation from their peers. We did not make our selections in haste; we also carefully selected interviewees based on a geographical spread that best represented various countries across the world to justify the global focus of our book. So that is why we went on a journey to interview experts from Berlin State Library, Bavarian State Library, the British Library, the British Museum, the National Library of France, the Vatican Library, the National Library of Denmark, the National Archives of Japan, the National Taiwan Library – just to name a few.
In the context of this book, East Asian collections not only refers to those housed and managed by library, archive, and museum (LAM) professionals who are ethnically of East Asian descent, but also their American as well as European colleagues, who have devoted their careers to safeguarding cultural heritage collections of immeasurable values. We conducted our research using a mixed-methods approach using semi-structure surveys through face-to-face meetings, Skype, and also by email depending on preferred mode of access by our interviewees. Upon completion of transcribing our interviews, we followed up with our interviewees for clarification and approval for publication of the text. We're looking forward to finally having this monograph out and available. Expect a June launch to come.
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