The three of us have been busy making final preparations to go. Starting this blog is one more task to be ticked off a neverending list. Rosalind is already gone so we have lost our primary contact with our hosts.
Since I can't figure out where else to put this, here is the biographical information on the three of us and background on the exchange itself.
The Oregon Library Association (OLA) International Relations Round Table's Selection Committee has chosen three delegates for the Horner Library Staff Exchange with the Fujian Provincial Library in China. The delegates will spend three weeks consulting with libraries in China in the fall of 2007. The delegates are Teresa Landers, Deputy Library Director and Extension Services Manager at Corvallis-Benton County Public Library; Gretta Siegel, Science Librarian at Portland State University; and Rosalind Wang, Professor Emeritus and past Social Science Librarian at the Portland State University Library. The Horner Library Staff Exchange will host four library delegates from Fujian Province, who are invited to visit Oregon for three weeks in late June and early July (they actually came in late August/early September). The delegates from Fujian Province are Ms. Yunzhang Fang, Chief of the Research and Assistance Department and Deputy Research Librarian at the Fujian Provincial Library; Mr. Xinsheng Wu, Chief of the Lending Department and Deputy Research Librarian, also from the Fujian Provincial Library; Mr. Yansheng Ruan, Deputy Director and Deputy Research Librarian from Fujian Normal University Library; and Ms. Liping Lin, Deputy Director of the Xiamen Municipal Library.
About the Exchange:
The Horner Library Staff Exchange Project is an exchange of library staff between Fujian Province, China, and Oregon, for the purpose of sharing professional knowledge about library and information science. It was established through a generous gift from the late Dr. Layton Horner to the Oregon State Library, and continues through a partnership between the Oregon State Library and OLA’s International Relations Round Table. Our international partners are the Fujian Provincial Library and the Fujian Library Association. Fujian is Oregon's sister province in China and the Fujian Provincial Library maintains a sister library relationship with the Oregon State Library.
About the U.S. Delegates:
Teresa Landers has been the Deputy Director of the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library for almost 8 years. For 15 years prior she held various positions in public libraries in the Phoenix AZ metro area. She has Master’s Degrees in Library Science and Organizational Management. She is active in OLA where she has served as Chair of the Public Library Division, Conference Chair and Conference Exhibits Co-Chair. She is currently Chair of the Oregon Digital Library Consortium. This group was formed by 8 public libraries to take advantage of cooperative purchasing of digital materials beginning with downloadable audio books from Overdrive. Her interest in going to China extends from a variety of international experiences earlier in life and her strong belief in the value of cross-cultural understanding.
Gretta Siegel has been a librarian and OLA member for close to 23 years, the past eight as Science Librarian at Portland State University. Former positions held were Assistant Director for Technical Services at the Oregon Graduate Institute, Campus Librarian at WSU-Vancouver, and Managing Librarian for the StreamNet Project at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.
Professor Siegel has a longstanding interest in international librarianship, having studied and worked with Cuban libraries for several years, and through her involvement with the international grey literature community. She is primarily interested in the dissemination of scientific and scholarly information, and in how countries with differing economic systems treat scholarly information – as a commodity or as a public good. In addition to observing general library practices, and practices related to the dissemination of scholarship, she also hopes to meet information managers or scientists who are connected to national or provincial grey literature in China. She would like to extend a personal invitation to them to join the international group of grey literature experts who meet on an annual basis.
Born in China and raised in Taiwan, Rosalind Wang’s library career has spanned 35 years. She started her professional library career at the Brooklyn Public Library in New York, and then became the Assistant City Librarian at the Oregon City Public Library. From 1979 through 1984, she was Head Librarian at the Vancouver Community Library in Vancouver, Washington. For the next 18 years, she served as a Social Sciences Librarian at the Portland State University Library until her retirement in 2002.
In 1987, Professor Wang accepted an invitation to conduct several workshops in Fuzhou, Fujian, China. During that time, library directors and librarians of Fujian requested Rosalind’s assistance to bridge and establish the sister library relationship between the Oregon State Library and the Fujian Provincial Library. Carrying this mission back to Oregon, Rosalind worked on this project with the Oregon-Fujian Book Exchange Committee, chaired by Frances Lau. On July 20, 1989, an agreement for the sister library relationship was signed by both the Oregon State and Fujian Provincial Libraries.
Under the leadership of the State Librarian, Jim Scheppke, a number of books were collected from various Oregon libraries and shipped to Fujian Province. In October 1993, a special Book Donation Ceremony was held in Salem, while Rosalind simultaneously attended an official Acceptance of Book Donation Ceremony in Fuzhou. In addition, she was able to persuade the Director of the Fujian Culture Department who supervised the operation of the Fujian Provincial Library to appropriate extra funding for book collection and an automation system for the new Fujian Provincial Library building, which was completed and dedicated on October 1, 1995.
About the Visits:
The group coming to Oregon from China this summer will spend three weeks touring Oregon and visiting various libraries. They will see both large and small academic and public libraries and will visit some special libraries such as the Nike Design Library, the Hatfield Marine Science Center Library, and the Oregon Health and Sciences University library. They will tour much of the state with trips to central Oregon, the coast and throughout the Willamette Valley. The group going to China will spend one week at each of three libraries – the Fujian Provincial Library and the Formal University Library, both in the city of Fuzhou, and the Xiamen University Library, in the city of Xiamen.
