What was there?The Australian National Chinese-Japanese-Korean (ANCJK) system was launched in June 1996. It was the first time ever Chinese, Japanese and Korean records have been extracted from the national bibliographic database to form a separate database. The Innopac system has been chosen to host the database. It handles East Asian characters using the EACC character set. It is a world's first separate CJK database and in August a pinyin database was created as a mirror database for Chinese records. This is another world's first as no other library in the English speaking world had converted Wade-Giles records into pinyin on such a massive scale with over 100,000 bibliographic records. The Wade-Giles database was finally ceased in December 1999 following LC's decision to use pinyin for Chinese records. The ANCJK system started out with 8 founding member libraries and gradually another 14 libraries joined in, some as search and holding members. All the member libraries contributed their cataloguing or holding online, making the database very up-to-date with nearly total coverage of CJK holdings in Australia. Starting with CJK records extracted from the ABN database, additional bibliographic data to support copy cataloguing were added to the system by loading LC records, National Diet Library records and RLIN records identified by member libraries in their searching. The growth of the database in the 10 years of existence was phenomenal. From 500,000 bibliographic and 230,000 holdings records in November 1996, the database grew to 900,000 bibliographic and 640,000 holdings records by September 2005. This made the database an extremely rich source of copy cataloguing records for current as well as older publications. Authority records have also been added to the database further increasing its usefulness and relevance to CJK cataloguers. Later on with the implementation of the Innopac Millennium version real time downline loading of records from RLIN and other libraries in East Asia was enabled. ANCJK member libraries have always been a dedicated group of librarians. From the earliest investigation of a CJK database in the Second National Roundtable on Libraries and Asia held in 1993, to the setting up of the Steering Committee, Technical Committee and Standards Committee in 1995, a group of library managers on the decision making as well as technical hands-on cataloguing levels have devoted a lot of time to make the ANCJK system happen and work to everyone's advantage. There was a strong spirit of cooperation among member libraries. After the implementation of the ANCJK system the annual CJK Users' Meeting was held as part of the larger ABN Users' Meeting (later Kinetica Users' Meeting) which provides a venue for ongoing discussion of ANCJK related system and cataloguing issues. On a state level there was also a NSW CJK Users' Meeting which held its meetings regularly throughout the year. The CJK email discussion list came into operation in 1997 as an online space for information dissemination and discussion, at times even for out of session discussions for issues raised at the CJK Users' Meetings. Governance of the ANCJK system has always been through the various committees and through collaborative decision making in the CJK Annual Users' Meetings. Training and marketing of the system was undertaken by the National Bibliographic Database Customer Service section. On the day-to-day management, the ANCJK system has always had a small dedicated team looking after it, notably CP Tang who worked on the system since 1993 through to its cessation in 2005. The team has carried out many quality assurance and database maintenance tasks to make the database as clean and up-to-date as possible.Where now?The ANCJK system ceased operations on 23 November 2005, in preparation for the implementation of the new Libraries Australia Cataloguing Client. As mentioned above, the separate ANCJK database was created in 1996 to enhance service to users of library materials in the East Asian languages. Through the re-development of the Kinetica system, it was envisaged that a software package with Unicode capability would be used to host the national bibliographic database making it possible to integrate CJK records back to the database to form a single source for all records with Australian holdings. It has always been the intention of the East Asian library community not to have a separate database when technology allows. Not only would it be obviously very useful for librarians and end users to have a one stop shop, but also for document delivery purpose the national bibliographic database now acts as one single discovery tool. In September 2004 the National Library announced that the cataloguing software IBW developed by OCLC Pica in the Netherlands has been chosen. Pica uses a Unicode platform and so the merging of the ANCJK database back with the national database became imminent. In late November 2005 the ANCJK database finally ceased operation, and all bibliographic and holdings records were loaded into the national database. The new Pica cataloguing client, branded as the Libraries Australia Cataloguing Client (LACC), was launched on 30 November 2005. In the early days of implementation the Client was found by most of CJK cataloguers to be quite inadequate in its functionalities. For a start the display and thus searching of the Japanese and Korean characters in the public searching interface, Libraries Australian Search (LA Search), was affected by an unexpected 'decomposition' of characters, rendering the script part of the records illegible. This problem took some 2 months to be resolved. More problematic is the usefulness of the database as a source of copy cataloguing. Firstly there were no external records loaded into the system until March, which affected access to LC CJK records as well as records from other CJK libraries around the country. Secondly, and more significantly, there was no Z39.50 searching configured in the first two months or so of its operation. Later when Z39.50 targets were set up, there were problems with the system stripping the script part of records before importing them, forcing libraries to either copy and paste back the data, or to let their new materials sit on shelves to wait for complete records. On the record export side, CJK staff in the Asian Collections branch of the National Library worked hard also to get the daily downloading of records from LACC to their local Voyager system working in the desired way. Things started to improve since February when most of the key staff in Libraries Australia started to return from their December/January holiday to solve outstanding issues. The Record import service, which replaces the old BatchLink, finally began, and records from external sources started to be loaded slowly. A great relief was brought by the finally correct configuration of the Z39.50 gateway in late March which enables the importing of complete bibliographic records with script. For other libraries which are formerly ANCJK member libraries, most of their local systems can handle East Asian scripts. So for them the cessation of the ANCJK system means an integration of the CJK cataloguing workflow with their internal mainstream cataloguing workflow. Cataloguing is done onto the local system, and LACC becomes one of their Z39.50 targets for copy cataloguing records, not a place to do cataloguing online. Their CJK records will be batch loaded into the national database, creating a delay before records will be available for other libraries to use. For the ones using LACC to contribute online, some CJK cataloguers have mentioned to me personally that due to the lack of training, they had to rely on a lot of trial and error in the early days to learn how to use the system. The plight of ANCJK member libraries was not assisted by the minimal details about CJK cataloguing in the LACC manual, which perhaps was an indication of CJK cataloguing issues not being considered thoroughly during the re-development or testing phases. Added to that was the fact that since the implementation the flow of information between Libraries Australia staff and CJK libraries has virtually disappeared. The discussion list CJK-L was totally inactive apart from general announcements for all Libraries Australia members. For end users the integration of CJK bibliographic data with the national database should bring about a new efficiency in finding all records and holdings in one place, especially after the search interface was made available for free searching in February. It would also make document delivery and resource sharing easier, thus enhancing both the finding and getting of information. The LA Search interface, though not particularly user friendly for CJK users, does offer an intuitive search interface for the end user to use. For ANCJK libraries, however, after much frustration with the system in the early days of implementation, there does not seem to be any improvement in sight for this particular user group in the future. With the integration of CJK database came also the disbanding of the CJK user community. When there was a dedicated ANCJK system serviced by a dedicated team of staff, there was a focus and a forum also for all ANCJK libraries to discuss issues like how CJK cataloguing could be streamlined and what new external copy cataloguing sources could be explored. The specific needs of this community now seem to be lost in the big scheme of things and the continuation of CJK expertise in the current Libraries Australia Database Services section which supports the national bibliographic utility is not guaranteed.Where to?Actually the new LACC software with its Unicode capability does have its potential. In this world of globalization, and in as multicultural a society as Australia, there is no reason why the system cannot support other community language collections, including Thai, Arabic, Burmese etc. How wonderful a resource the ANBD will become if it incorporates all bibliographic records in all formats and in all languages. It is certainly the hope of this writer that in researching the inclusion of more languages into the database the lessons learned in the implementation of LACC for CJK users will not be lost. The search interface on LA Search, the flow of information, training and documentation are just some of the issues to be taken into account. |