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Introduction
Macquarie University Library has a collection of East Asian materials numbering approximately 12,000 titles. These materials are constituted by titles in a number of languages, namely Chinese and Japanese, and a small number of Korean, Thai, Mongol and Tibetan. The purchasing power of the Library for East Asian materials is not great but allows us to purchase 200 or 300 titles per year, depending of course on the price of the individual items. We also on occasion gratefully receive substantial donations. System Our Library has a full Voyager ILMS and does ordering and accessioning of both monographs and serials, and also cataloguing of East Asian materials via this system. To date the Voyager system is equipped with what is known as a "glyph server" which allows East Asian characters to be displayed as a graphic image file, in the OPAC view of the bibliographic records. These characters cannot be manipulated, apart from deletion, via the cataloguing subsystem. We are awaiting the Unicode release for the system that will enable this sort of functionality. Staffing There are three staff (two are native speakers) who are involved in processing East Asian materials. All of these staff have language ability, but only two actually have CJK work written into their Job Descriptions. These are the two cataloguers engaged to do the Chinese and Japanese language materials cataloguing, and they are classified at the University HEW6 level, the professional librarian level. The third staff member happens to have Japanese language ability and is presently stationed in the Acquisitions Section and engaged in carrying out the ordering and accessioning tasks. She is employed at HEW Level 4. None of these three staff are totally engaged in CJK work. It forms about 20% or less of their total work time. Two other staff who are stationed in the Reference Department in the Library have Chinese language ability (both are native speakers) and are employed at HEW Level 5. Neither of these two staff are really assigned to doing CJK-related work at present, and nothing is stated in their Job Descriptions about CJK. One of them, until early this year was stationed in the Cataloguing Department for 6 years and was assisting with the searching of databases for Chinese and Japanese copy cataloguing. She has since then been seconded to Reference to do standard reference work which does not contain CJK. The other has been able to have some input to the Reference work in relation to CJK but this is not in her Job Description either. She is continually called upon to answer Reference Desk queries from students and staff in relation to CJK topics, and assists other Reference staff in writing instructions for the use of software requiring a CJK ability, when such software is acquired. She was responsible for supervising the trial of e-book product Superstar a few months ago. The librarian who is responsible for liaison with the Humanities Department of the University often calls upon this staff member to assist also with training and the compilation of reference aids which include a CJK component. We do not have anyone with capabilities in Korean language and have not purchased any materials since 2000. In the interest of sharing our expertise and assisting other libraries in dealing with the materials that they have acquired, we have done cataloguing of Thai materials for the State Library of New South Wales and the University of Sydney Fisher Library, and also Japanese for UTS and Chinese and Japanese for the University of Newcastle on an irregular basis. It is particularly satisfying being able to help other libraries to improve access to their collections. Issues Basically we do not have any real difficulties in carrying out cataloguing of Chinese and Japanese materials. We have the requisite software for cataloguing to the Libraries Australia CJK Database and have good support for this from our Head of Department. Our local system does not at present allow manipulation of characters but we are expecting this to change before the end of this year once the Unicode release of the system software is loaded. We are looking forward also to the implementation of the new Libraries Australia Cataloguing Client as we have had some problems with MilCat, particularly on account of the fact that we are not an Innopac library. The combination of the CJK Database and AnzioWin however has been very satisfactory. Looking at our collection however, the main issue is that it is growing according to the individual choices of those in charge in the Asian Studies Department in the University. Professors always have their own special interests and consequently the selection of materials takes different directions. If that professor leaves the University then we are left with an incomplete line of materials that may be of no use to anyone else. There should be a policy to also develop a good collection of core materials. To assist in making core materials and specialised materials widely available, there is definitely a need for the continuation and development of a national union catalogue such as we have in the Libraries Australia CJK Database. In terms of our staffing structure, in order to offer an appropriate service to the University community however, it would be prudent to acknowledge CJK work done by staff by having it clearly reflected in their written Job Descriptions. |