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APSIG newsletter no. 61: July 2006Earthquake in central JavaA violent earthquake in central Java on 27 May killed at least 5,800 people, displaced as many as 1.5 million and destroyed 150,000 houses in the densely populated Yogyakarta and Central Java provinces. The Library of Gadja Madah University, one of Indonesia's most prestigious universities, survived the earthquake, but suffered severe cracking to its walls and damage to collections when they were flung to the ground. Many of the library staff are now homeless as the worst residential destruction was in the southern Yogyakarta area of Bantul, where many of them lived. Many school buildings in the Bantul area were flattened, but fortunately the Bantul public library survived. However the library of the respected Indonesian Institute of Arts (Institut Seni Indonesia) was destroyed. Local authorities in Yogya recently announced that as many as 26 tent libraries would be established to provide reading materials to residents, especially students. ASAA 2006: Asia reconstructedThe biennial ASAA Conference, this year held from 26-29 June on the attractive University of Wollongong campus tacked a number of engaging and relevant themes for Asian studies in Australia today. Several keynote sessions questioned the role and future of Asian studies, and invited speakers from a range of disciplines outside Asian studies had fresh and interesting insights on some often discussed issues, such as falling enrolments in universities, the dumbing down of the curriculum and the changing nature of the job market for Asian studies graduates. Registrations for the conference were down on the 2004 Conference, with approximately 250 delegates, but there was no shortage of parallel sessions, with as many as twelve different sessions to choose from on some days. Two very successful library-related sessions drew good audiences during the conference. In this issue of the APSIG Newsletter we report on the first, with the second one to follow in our next issue. 'Managing digital materials in the research environment, or, what to do when your PDFs are obsolete', organised by the National Library, had an interested audience of academics and the few librarians who were attending the conference. Speakers Kevin Bradley of the National Library, Helen Mandl of Wollongong University Library, Darrell Dorrington of the ANU Library and Adrian Burton of the APSR Project (Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories) gave a series of informative and well-considered papers on the subject of digital obsolescence, changing technologies and institutional solutions. Kevin Bradley highlighted in layman's terms why academics and librarians need to think about preserving documents in digital form. Several things can happen to digital information: the physical technology will change (such as the hardware to run floppy disks); the format will become obsolete, such as PDFs; and lastly, backup is not preservation - it keeps parts of the document but won't preserve access. The PDF format, for example, depends on other bits of software like fonts to display correctly. Copying to a CD, said Kevin, is not a preservation strategy. Helen Mandl gave an informative overview of a number of multimillion dollar projects currently running in Australia to develop the technologies needed for large-scale digital repositories. She noted that so far the repository projects were focused on research data in the hard sciences. There was a need to raise awareness amongst practitioners of the role of research repositories in the social sciences and humanities and start working to identify valuable research collections, including for Asian studies. In particular, said Helen, the smaller less well-resourced universities needed to become involved. Adrian Burton of the APSR Project (Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories) drew together the themes of both Kevin and Helen's papers in presenting the activities of the APSR Project, which was established to work with partner institutions to develop the technology for the management of large quantities of digital data collections. He noted that academics are best placed to know what is significant about collections.
Darrell Dorrington of the ANU Asia-Pacific Division highlighted a number of ANU's Asian digitisation projects - the Chinese Digital Archive, the Giles-Pickford collection of photographs of China 1860-1950, and an album of photographs of a tiger shoot in Nepal, 1911. All were available on the ANU Library website and were also archived in the ANU digital repository. From Bloomsbury to Burma : the life of Gordon LuceDr Pamela Gutman, Honorary Associate in the Department of Art History and Theory at Sydney University, is currently a Harold White Fellow at the National Library of Australia. She is undertaking research for a biography of Gordon Hannington Luce (1889-1979), whose collection, comprising some 2,000 books, manuscripts, maps and photographs, was acquired by the Library in 1980. Her Harold White Fellowship presentation on Thursday 22 June outlined Luce's long and distinguished life. He read Classics and English Literature at Cambridge, before being appointed lecturer in English at Government College, Rangoon in 1912. Influenced by a Burmese friend, the scholar Pe Maung Tin, he began his lifelong interest in Burmese culture, especially the art and architecture of the former capital, Pagan. Dr Gutman outlined Luce's long and distinguished life. Gordon Hannington Luce was born the twelfth child of an Anglican minister in Gloucestershire, England. He read Classics and English Literature at Cambridge, before being appointed lecturer in English at Government College, Rangoon in 1912. Influenced by a Burmese friend, the scholar Pe Maung Tin, he began his lifelong interest in Burmese culture, especially the art and architecture of the former capital, Pagan. In 1915 he married Daw Tee Tee, sister of Pe Maung Tin. After the First World War he was passed over for promotion because the British authorities distrusted his pro-Burmese sympathies. Though he wanted to spend the rest of his life in Burma he was forced to flee twice; in 1942 during the Japanese invasion, and again in 1964, when the military regime expelled foreign residents. His final years were spent on the island of Jersey, where he continued to teach and carry out research. Dr Gutman worked with him on Jersey in 1974. She mentioned Luce's important contributions in a wide range of fields, including linguistics, ethnography, literature, epigraphy and history. His three volume masterpiece, Old Burma - early Pagan, published in 1969, covers the history, art and architecture of Burma and its capital Pagan in the 11th and 12th centuries. During her talk, Dr Gutman paid particular tribute to the eminent Burmese librarian and historian, U Thaw Kaung, who was awarded a fellowship by the National Library to improve the listing of the Luce papers.
Dr Gutman will complete her Harold White Fellowship in August. Her biography of Luce will be welcomed by scholars and students of Asian studies, as well as a wider audience interested in the intellectual history of the twentieth century.
Voices of the forgotten: the East Timor living memory projectAnya Dettman of the National Library gave an illustrated talk on 29 March about a new project in Dili to record Timorese oral histories. Funded by the Southeast Asian Digital Library project at Northern Illinois University, the East Timor Living Memory project aims to gather testimonies from Timorese people imprisoned during the Indonesian occupation and largely forgotten, as the title of the talk suggests, in the post-independence period. Anya and her partner Bob Legge learned of the project through the APSIG Newsletter and volunteered to work in Dili as librarian- archivists for six weeks earlier this year. Their talk was hosted by the very generous Asia Bookroom at their new premises in Lawry Place, Macquarie, ACT. An interested audience of academics and librarians attended.
The project is led by Jill Jolliffe, a well-known journalist and supporter of East Timor. Jill has written several books on East Timor and has devoted the past thirty years to their struggle. She was recently awarded Yale University's Journalist of the Year award for her outstanding work. Anya gave a vivid description of the project's operations in Dili. Located in a private house, it is deliberately employing many survivors of the period of resistance. Although they cannot be paid much, they gladly contribute their time and effort to ensure that their story is not lost. To date forty five of a proposed 120 interviews have been recorded. Anya and Bob were tremendously impressed by the courage and fortitude of those being interviewed who had experienced torture, imprisonment and exile.
The interviewees speak in a variety of languages (Indonesian, Portuguese, Tetum and other dialects) which adds to the complexity of the task. The aim is to add edited versions of the testimonies to the Southeast Asian Digital Library website, which will be hosted by Northern Illinois University.
5th Asia-Pacific triennial of contemporary artThe 5th Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT5) will be the opening exhibition when the Queensland Art Gallery's second site, the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) opens to the public on Saturday, 2 December 2006. The Queensland Art Gallery will reopen at the same time after four months refurbishment Situated at Kurilpa Point on the Brisbane River, GoMA will be the largest modern and contemporary art gallery in Australia. It will be 30 percent larger than the existing building just 200 metres away, which opened as the first stage of the Queensland Cultural Centre at South Bank in 2002. GoMA will display the Gallery's collections of modern and contemporary Australian, Indigenous Australian, Asian, Pacific and international art while the pre-1970 collections will remain on display in the Queensland Art Gallery. On display in both sites, APT5 will feature more than 300 works by 37 artists, and two multi-artist projects, from Asia, Australia and the Pacific. It will include a program of performance-based art and, for the first time, a cinema program, presented by the Australian Cinémathèque. The popular Kids' APT will return with a series of commissioned artist projects for children and a major children's festival.
Have a look! East Asian updateMaintaining its active publishing schedule this year, the latest issue of the EALRGA Newsletter, no. 49, has just been published.
In this issue Andrew Gosling continued his account of his professional life, this time very closely knitted to the development of the Asian Collections section at the National Library of Australia. Wan Wong has written an article on the new cataloguing system that replaced the Australian National CJK System late last year. And of course there is also the latest news from the major East Asian libraries in the country. Wan Wong Editor, EALRGA Newsletter Up the creek with a PADDLEThe Pacific Archive of Digital Data for Learning and Education (PADDLE) is a new project aimed at improving educational infrastructure in the Pacific. PADDLE has been developed as part of the PRIDE Project (Pacific Regional Initiatives for the Delivery of basic Education). The PRIDE Project seeks to enhance student learning in fifteen Pacific countries by strengthening the capacity of each Ministry of Education to plan and deliver quality basic education. The Project is implemented by the Institute of Education at the University of the South Pacific and is jointly funded by the European Union and the New Zealand Agency for International Development. It facilitates the sharing of best practice and experience amongst the fifteen Pacific countries of the Project. The focus is to provide access to all relevant education policy, planning and development material from the participating countries. Most of these documents have previously been unavailable in digital form. It provides full text access to a comprehensive collection of Pacific education material. This includes publications from the participating Ministries of Education including strategic plans, education legislation, curriculum frameworks and school policies. It also contains national development plans, statistics and budget information for the fifteen Pacific countries. PADDLE is available online at and in CD-ROM format. An e-mail service with updates of additions is available, along with education news from the Pacific. To subscribe to the email service or to request a CD-ROM copy of PADDLE, write. Elizabeth Cass University of the South Pacific PIALA conference announcement15th Annual Conference and General Meeting, Pacific Islands Association of Libraries and Archives (PIALA) will be held on November 13 - 17, 2006, Koror, Republic of Palau. The 2006 conference theme is 'Libraries, Archives, and Museums: Building Knowledge Networks for Vibrant Communities.' PIALA 2006 will feature a two day pre-conference workshop on Library Advocacy, organized by Arlene Cohen (University of Guam RFK Library) and funded by IFLA.
For more information, please go to the PIALA site: or contact:
Sandy Fernandez Arlene Cohen recognisedAPSIG warmly congratulates our friend and colleague Arlene Cohen on receiving the 2006 Virginia Boucher-OCLC Distinguished Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Librarian Award. Arlene, who is well-known in the Pacific community, is associate professor and the circulation and interlibrary loan librarian, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Library, University of Guam, Mangilao. The award recognizes and honours a librarian for outstanding professional achievement, leadership and contributions to ILL and document delivery. The US$2,000 award and citation are donated by OCLC, Online Computer Library Center. 'Arlene Cohen exemplifies excellence in interlibrary loan services,' said Suzanne Ward, chair of the award committee. 'Her outstanding accomplishments include initiating cooperative interlibrary loan services throughout the Pacific Islands, a distinguished record of publications and presentations on resource sharing and access to information resources; and her tireless advocacy for library services to underdeveloped regions.' Arlene Cohen co-founded FreeShare, a cross-regional DOCLINE library group whose members agree to fill interlibrary loan requests free of charge. She also mentors FreeForAll, a coalition of libraries providing free interlibrary loan to libraries in the developing world. Well done, Arlene! Library training in New ZealandAPPLY NOW! The IFLA ALP Course on Information Literacy and IT for Information Professionals in Asia and Oceania Wellington, New Zealand Nov - Dec 2007 is now in its fifth year. The overall theme is information literacy, with special reference to needs and developments of countries in Asia and Oceania. The course will cover the basics of information literacy and information literacy training skills needed by information professionals in a variety of settings, as well as current IT applications in libraries. Classroom participation and hands-on practice will be interspersed with visits to leading libraries and information agencies in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand and home to a wide array of 'cutting-edge' information organisations. The course will be taught by leading educators in library and information management from Victoria University of Wellington, as well as practitioners with considerable experience in the delivery of information literacy programmes. There are also visits to major libraries and information services in the Greater Wellington region .While the course is purposely small, to allow one-on-one training and closely monitored IT lab work, If you wish to apply for a scholarship for the 2007 course, details can be found on website.
There are also limited vacancies for fee-paying students. A fee of US$2500 covers all tuition, course materials and accommodation in comfortable University housing. Airfares, visas and meals are an additional expense. The final selection of applicants will be made in early September. There is no application form, but potential participants should send an email message outlining (1) professional education, (2) professional work experience, (3) level of English ability,(4) reasons for wishing to attend the course and (5) self-assessed IT capabilities. Please email this information to: APSIG Newsletter
ISSN 1327 1024 Copy deadline for November 2006 is Wednesday 25 October. Contributions very welcome especially from the Asia/Pacific region.
Contact : Marie Sexton Editor
Issues mounted on the APSIG homepage. Copies of the APSIG newsletter are sent via the Internet to members with email addresses. APSIG email listJoin the APSIG listserve and keep up-to-date. You are invited to join the aliaAPSIG e-list and keep up-to-date with developments. All contributions welcomed. Join via the APSIG homepage.
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