Friday Oct 26-Mon Oct 29

We have been kept moving at a whirlwind pace with very little time to spend on this blog or anything else. Some more pictures got loaded but we are still unable to see the blog so really cannot see it as you do. I do have one way but have not had time to do it so hope it’s ok. Also, I seemed to get the only room in a 24 story hotel where the Internet is not working and cannot be fixed so it took another day before Rosalind and I had time to exchange rooms. So, once again we are a day behind. Tomorrow I will try to post for Monday and Tuesday but right now I am going to load this then go to bed!

Friday we thought we were visiting a “native” village. As usual we were in for a lot more. We went to Changle which meant they had to get special permission from the government in order for westerners to visit. We felt quite honored. We visited several cultural centers and the Changle Library. The highlights were the library which is only a couple of years old with a very modern children’s room and Internet access area, the museum and the cultural centers. One of the cultural centers is funded entirely by overseas Chinese except for the water and electricity. The most interesting cultural center was one in a poor area that had been converted from a temple. Since my camera died at this point you will have to wait until I can post Gretta’s pictures. It is open in part to the outside which makes it quite cool and fresh. It serves as a quasi senior center and we were the most interesting thing to happen there in a very long time. The senior men even gave up watching tv to watch us.

This was a red letter day for us- we actually had two official 16 course banquets in one day, The first was with the cultural minister for Changle who gave up half of her busy day to accompany us. The second was the Fuzhou Provincial Library farewell banquet. As you can imagine we are all avoiding scales at all costs.

Saturday was a “relax” day. It involved a two car 10 person excursion to the Da Ming Wu Hot Springs. It is about 2.5 hours up in the mountains with a series of hot springs each of which provides a different medicinal quality. It involved another large lunch and tea time. We got back to Fuzhou just in time for, you guessed it, dinner and packing.

We thought Sunday would be a 3 hour drive to Xiamen but we stopped in Quanzhou along the way and spent all afternoon visiting a maritime museum which was absolutely fascinating as Quanzhou was considered the main port for the maritime silk trade. We visited the library as well which is almost 20 years old with a new one under design and scheduled for opening in 3-4 years. We visited a Buddhist temple during chanting time then did some more sightseeing before heading to Xiamen where we were welcomed by another sumptuous dinner.

Today was our first day in Xiamen and we spent it at the Xiamen Municipal Library. This library opened in February 2007 so is brand new, extremely modern and very well funded. Many procedures are similar to those followed by the Provincial Library in terms of circulation policies and acquisitions procedures. But they differ in a number of ways. Xiamen is a special economic zone which gives it special funding and other procedures. One of these is the ability to trade in foreign currency so they can buy directly from overseas publishers. Xiamen has also been able to be somewhat more able to introduce innovations some of which are the result of being new and able to start their design from scratch. They have a very open floor plan with small reference desks and computers scattered throughout the building. They have self checkout available and have not kept a card catalog. They are introducing AV very soon once the security issue is handled (they are waiting for some equipment) and are working on creating a “popular library” concept.

We had a great dinner with the Xiamen Deputy Culture Minister who was just delightful. Gretta is to be commended as she tried the jellied sea worm that was put on her plate. Rosalind says it is not a worm but a sea vegetable inside gelatin. Gretta swears there were body parts and it was sharing a plate with octopus and pigs feet. We will never really know but, no, it does not taste like chicken.

Oh- and Happy Halloween everyone!

Wed and Thur Oct 24 and 25

Some pictures have been posted in fairly random order at this point. More are coming as time permits. We are currently unable to view the blog ourselves and cannot read comments so we hope you are enjoying it and forgive us if we don’t respond to something on which you have commented. We are also only providing the briefest of summaries here and encourage you to contact any one of us upon our return for details or join us at OLA next Spring.

On Wednesday we spent the day visiting several more departments at the Fuzhou Provincial Library. We visited the Consultation Department which provides support throughout the province for libraries and librarians. This includes providing research and investigation on library service, continuing education and coordination of resource sharing. They write reports using very detailed statistical information and submit these to the Ministry of Culture and the provincial legislature. This office also oversees the maintenance of the MARC record throughout the province.

We then met with the General Secretary of the Society of the Fujian Library Society which would be the equivalent of OLA. He serves as the primary administrator of the society, as the editor of the journal produced by the society- Theory and Practice of Library Science, and as a primary coordinator of interlibrary communication both within the province and outside of it. They put on an annual conference and cooperate with other provinces for additional conferences. There are 3 paid staff in charge of the organization. First the society decides on the location for overseeing the society (right now it is the Provincial Library) then that library suggests a staff member to be General Secretary. If the individual is approved by the membership the hosting library provides the 3 staff and the office with the salaries supported by the hosting library. Our host, Chen Shun, has been General Secretary since 1989.

The Audiovisual department is primarily a production department. They digitize books and cultural events that are then posted on the web. They are building a local database of cultural materials. Some AV materials are available for checkout but users must pay an annual nonrefundable fee of $200 (RMB) and then a deposit of $200 (RMB) and can only borrow up to that value.

We then attended a meeting chaired by the Library Director and attended by his 3 deputy directors. Not very different from meetings many of us attend in the US. They discussed issues they are facing and how they are going to be handled.

At night we attended a banquet for past Horner Fellows and Library Management held at a beautiful restaurant along the Min Jiang River- pictures to come. The weather is beautiful and we didn’t even need the sweaters they made us bring.

On Thursday we visited the temporary quarters for the Children’s Library. A new one is being planned and in anticipation they are currently housed in an old hotel. One way in which they differ from most of us is that they work closely with the schools and support the curriculum. The card for this library is separate from the Main Library but not for access reasons. In fact, since they can only buy from approved publishers and cannot have pirated books there is no censorship of what is read since they cannot buy controversial material to begin with. Representatives from the government do come and check the collection. They are also very strong in the area of providing parenting materials and service to parents. Instead of in-library story times they go out to the nursery schools and do activities there.

The afternoon was spent with Gretta giving a presentation on Grey Literature and Teresa presenting on the “customer focused” “give them what they want” library movement in US public libraries. The presentations were attended by about 150 members of the Fujian Library Society. Rosalind did an incredible job translating for us and spent many hours “learning” about our subjects so she could make the translation even more effective. She is an amazing resource and we would be lost (literally and figuratively) without her.

Tuesday October 23

We have been kept so busy and we have been so tired that adding to the blog and downloading pictures has taken a back seat. We are still working on the pictures and expect to have some up within the next couple of days.

Tuesday we consulted with the Lending Division, Technical Services and the Research Division. Each one is incredibly different than what we are used to. This will be a brief enticement to join us at our program at OLA!

The Lending Division is the circulating collection and includes actually checking out the materials. There are 3 rooms where this occurs and each covers different subject areas. Fiction is classified as deeply as nonfiction. Getting a card involves leaving a deposit and then being allowed to check out materials worth up to half the value of your deposit. The biggest issue they are facing is decreasing circulation. They are strongly driven by circulation statistics set by the Ministry of Culture and standards for libraries which set collection size as the primary standard. Because of this, there is no weeding. They have not yet reached 2 million volumes which is the standard. We discussed various ways to increase circulation.

Technical Services is primarily acquisitions and cataloging with all processing done by one of the two vendors or bookstores they buy from. They also purchase a lot at the annual Book Fair. However, the processing is not “pre-processing” as many of us know it, but the provider comes on site to the library 3 times for each book to complete the processing.

The Research Division is separate from the Reference Division. This group of 7 subject specialists does in depth research for anyone who asks with the provincial government as one of their primary clients. The do the research and present it in a report to the requestor.

In the afternoon we were taken to Gushan Mountain which is a Buddhist Temple built into a mountain. Quite beautiful and moving. We did discover that Teresa seems farther along the road to Enlightenment than either Gretta or Rosalind but that is another story…
We also visited Mawei which is a commercial shipping port. Fuzhou is on the Min Jiang river which is navigable to the ocean so there are many ships. There is also a memorial park which honors the history of the shipping industry in China as well as its naval history. Getting us to understand their cultural background and historical context is very important to our hosts as well as to us and greatly enriches the experience we are having.

Dinner was a mere 8 or 9 courses (can’t remember already) then we were taken to a local department store. I don’t want to give away our purchases as some of you reading this may be getting something from there as a gift!

Day One Fujian Provincial LIbrary

We all arrived safely Saturday night and Sunday. On Sunday night we were treated to a 10+ course meal (not a banquet!) and then attended an unusual celebration. As guests of the Ministry of Culture we had reserved seats at a community celebration to commemorate the end of the 17th People’s Congress. It was spectacular- fireworks, 11 musical and dancing acts- just an amazing pageant. We will post pictures soon.

Gretta and Teresa are dealing with jet lag and hope to catch up on sleep soon. Rosalind has been in China for 2 weeks prior so she is faring somewhat better!

We just completed our first official day of the visit. What a great day we had at the Fujian Provincial Library. Special thanks to one of the deputy directors who treated us morning and afternoon with his own special tea blend and very sophisticated tea making process. We look forward to the next couple of days to enjoy what new blends he has in store for us.

In the morning we met with all the department and deputy directors and got the background on the library. Then the staff held their regular meeting where they discuss monthly evaluations of each of their departments- what is going well, what the problems are and how to address them. Signage, facility issues, misshelved items, materials not getting to the shelves in a timely manner were all addressed. I felt like I’d never left home.

In the afternoon we got an in-depth tour of the Library which generated a lot of questions that we will deal with in more depth as we meet with each division separately. We took lots of pictures but it will be a couple of days before we can get them posted as we are off to a banquet with the Minister of Culture and other important officials tonight then will try to conquer jet lag by getting to bed “early”.

Background on exchange and participants

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.