APSIG Newsletter number 51 - March 2003

As others see us

Andrew Gosling

A major one-day conference entitled As Others See Us: Chinese and Japanese Accounts of Australia was held in February at the National Library of Australia. The conference discussed Chinese and Japanese perceptions of Australia as reflected in the national library's holdings. It showcased the results of a three year project entitled Asian Accounts of Australia which was designed to make these materials more accessible.

The library has a particular strength in Chinese and Japanese language writings about Australian topics. There are currently about 1000 works in Chinese and 3000 in Japanese in the Australiana collections. Australiana holdings in other Asian languages are much more modest and probably consist of around 200 titles in all.

From the Librarys point of view the most important product of the project has been the compilation of eight annotated bibliographies of Chinese and Japanese Australiana prepared by the projects research associates with advice and assistance from staff in Asian Collections. Following assistance from the library's web services staff these bibliographies are now accessible on the national library's website.

The bibliographies, with their synopses, provide greatly enhanced access to these materials beyond the information available in the library's online catalogue. With their mounting on the internet they are now available nationally and internationally. This should certainly widen exposure of the Asian collections to readers and researchers who may well be unaware of the national library's strengths in this area.

In conjunction with the Asian Accounts of Australia project the library has issued a catalogue of the Australiana collection in the Chinese language. This lists relevant monographs, periodicals, newspapers, maps and electronic materials. These are listed under three categories: works about Australia, works by Australian authors in Chinese and translations of Australian authors. Copies of this listing are available free of charge from Wan Wong (please remove '.nospam' from address), Asian collections.