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The Internet has made a tremendous difference in terms of literature searches. Most libraries in Australia can be accessed now, making research a great deal easier. Nevertheless, there are some problems associated with collections and distance.
National Library of Australia staff are generally very helpful. This is not always the case in individual university libraries whose staff may see themselves primarily as serving their own libraries.
Collections in Canberra are sufficient to do most research in Chinese Studies, and are certainly as good as most libraries in countries outside China. There is a problem with accessing items in Menzies Library on the Internet, as recent books are not in the catalogue.
For Chinese, a simple problem still exists: some libraries still use Wade-Giles romanisation. Some students are confused despite being taught the different romanisations systems.
However, the biggest problem is distance for us at the University of Queensland. Seeing what is on the catalogue is not the same as handling the books. Sydney and Melbourne have reasonable libraries, but they are also the closest to Canberra. Those of us in Queensland, the Northern Territory, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania are furthest away, but with the worst Asian language collections. Each year, my department alone spends thousands of dollars just to send our postgraduate students and ourselves to Canberra.
This problem breeds resentment because we see two excellent libraries, sometimes with identical materials, in the same city, but we have a lot more people with no collections even approaching that.
But this is a perennial problem. At least in the past, there were scholarships to enable library work for researchers and postgraduate students. In recent years, these scholarships and fellowships seem to have declined in number. We spend money to send our people to Canberra. The only people to benefit from this are Ansett, Qantas and the hotels.
Recommendation:
That this meeting urge the Asian Studies Association of Australia to lobby for the restoration of the travel grants for library use for research students. |