Digital libraries provide a mechanism to assemble collections that

The Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance and the Pacific Rim Library

R. Bruce Miller

Associate University Librarian, User Support Services, University of California, San Diego

Karl Lo

Director, International Relations and Pacific Studies Library, University of California, San Diego

Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance

The Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance (http://www.prdla.org) was created in October 1997 and includes the following members:

Academia Sinica, Taipei
Australian National University Library, Canberra
El Colegio de Mexico Library, Mexico City
Keio University Library, Tokyo
National University of Singapore Library
Peking University Library, Beijing
Seoul National University Library
University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver
University of California, Berkeley Library
University of California, San Diego Libraries
University of Hong Kong Libraries
University of Washington Libraries, Seattle
Zhongshan University Library, Guangzhou

The goal of the Alliance is to facilitate access to scholarly research materials, primarily by using digital technology to share and deliver information resources in a timely and effective manner. Administrative bureaucracy has been minimized, pilot projects with rapid results are preferred over “grand schemes”, and cooperative ventures among subsets of the membership are encouraged. Successful pilot projects deliver needed information resources to scholars and, at the same time, provide the foundations and test beds for the development of even more substantial resources. Funding for Alliance activities has been through a combination of grants from the Henry R. Luce Foundation, the National Security Education Program, fundraising from individual donors, and resources from the participating members.

The Pacific Rim Library

The Pacific Rim Library (http://prl.sdsc.edu) is conceptualized as a virtual “internet library” that will provide conventional library collections and services in support of research and education related to the Pacific Rim. Digitized books, journals, maps, manuscripts, and other materials will be available online and, whenever possible, electronic document delivery and interlibrary loan will provide access to materials that are not available online. A conservative estimate concludes that there are more than 50 million volumes among the combined holdings of the Alliance libraries. The Alliance has initiated a variety of actions and projects to begin creating this Pacific Rim digital library. Building upon expertise and resources within the Alliance, initial technical projects include:

Beijing SuperStar Digital Library - scanned images of contemporary Chinese books
Bibliography of East Asian Studies – index of Western language journal articles
Romax - conversion applet for Chinese romanization (Pinyin, Wade-Giles, Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II)
Scripta Sinica -digital library databases from Academia Sinica
Wenyuange Sikuquanshu - Qing Palace Wenyuan Library. Full-text and scanned images of 3,700 titles.
Multilingual Gateway – an interface to facilitate access to the catalogs and information resources of the Alliance members. Production access is anticipated shortly. The gateway allows a researcher to use the local catalog interface and the local natural language to query a remote catalog or online information resource that might use a different interface or a different language. This multilingual gateway accommodates Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish speakers within all of the Alliance universities. Connections among systems are based on the International Standard Protocol for Information Retrieval (ANSI/NISO Z39.50 and ISO 23950).

Conclusion

The traditional role of the library to acquire, organize, and deliver information is an enduring one. However, rapid changes in both the quantity and the formats of information resources have combined with budgetary limitations to undermine the viability of the classic library founded on large, comprehensive collections. The US-Korean Joint Workshop on Digital Libraries has underscored the need for continued effort to include cultural information from Korea. The Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance has begun to demonstrate that political, language, geographic, and technical obstacles can be overcome through a variety of practical projects and agreements.