Notes From The Library, Issue No. 37

Abstract

[evdate 2000-08-30] Notes From The Library Issue No. 37 September 2000 http library.ust.hk/

Information Literacy Tutorial Now Available Online

Information literacy is the ability to identify what information is needed as well as the ability to search, locate, evaluate, and use information effectively in solving problems.

To equip our students with this skill, over 50 students and staff have been involved in designing and evaluating an online Information Literacy Tutorial that enables students to learn at their own pace.

Why is it important? Although students in general think they are good at searching information, a 1994 study at UC Berkeley (http www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Survey.html) found the opposite to be true. Fewer than 50% of their students were able to effectively search for needed information. Being information literate is increasingly important these days. Time Magazine (May 22, 2000 issue) ranked Data Miners (people who are skilled at searching for information) as the fifth hottest job of the future.

The tutorial consists of 6 modules which cover library services; techniques in searching all kinds of materials including books, journal and newspaper articles, and web sources; and evaluation of information. Three modules will be ready this September and the other 3 will be available in February.

Recognizing the importance of information literacy, our Business, Engineering, and Science schools all require their first year UG students to take this online tutorial or to attend the face-to-face library instruction classes. The tutorial is available to anyone who has an interest in it. Go to http webct.ust.hk/, choose Course Listing, then Library (Information Literacy Tutorial). Other students will also find the tutorial useful as what it introduces is an essential life-long learning skill.

Your feedback will contribute to our endeavor in making this program a useful learning experience for our students.

[photograph of university librarian being conferred guest professorship] University Librarian, Min-min Chang, being conferred a Guest Professorship at Peking University (see 接受北京大學授予客座教授答詞 below.)

《中文社會科學期刊引文索引》-南京大學與香港科技大學的合作項目

一篇文章如果引用了其他文章，或被其他文章引用，那麼引用文章與被引用的文章應 有某種內在聯繫。引文索引就是基於這種邏輯把相關文章聯結起來。從引文索引數據 庫檢索出來的環環相扣的文章，可以發現某個課題、甚至某種學科的發展軌跡及最新 成果，因此引文索引是極重要的研究工具。

《中文社會科學引文索引》(Chinese Social Science Citation Index) 是由南京大 學與香港科技大學合作研製，是迄今為止第一個人文、社會科學中文學術期刊的引文 索引。 處於起步階段的CSSCI選用了大陸1998年出版的中文人文科學、社會科學學術 期刊496種，來源文獻6萬餘篇，被引用文獻近28萬篇。 在不久的將來，這個數據庫還 會收錄香港及世界其他地區人文社會科學主 要中文學術期刊200多種，而1998年之前 之後的期刊也將陸續收入。

CSSCI主要從來源文獻和被引文獻兩個方面向用戶提供信息。 來源文獻的檢索途徑 有：論文作者、篇名、作者機構、作者地區、期刊名稱、關鍵詞、文獻分類號、學科 類別、基金項目以及年代、卷期等10餘項。 被引文獻的檢索途徑有：被引文作者、篇 名或書名、期刊名稱、出版社、年代、被引文獻類型等。CSSCI的1998光碟版已於今年 五月問世。本校將裝置並負責推廣互聯網版。

除了以上介紹的數據庫，還有中國科學院文獻情報中心研製的《中國科學引文數據 庫》(1989-1998)。値得注意的是，在中國，"科學"與"社會科學"這兩個概念的內涵比 英語中的Science和Social Science要廣。科學往往包括工程學和醫學等，社會科學包 括藝術、人文等。 因此這兩個引文數據庫，在概念上已經覆蓋了各個學科領域。

Library Undertakes Pinyin Conversion Project

To represent Chinese characters in Western alphabets, different romanization schemes were developed. For many years, the majority of libraries in the English-speaking world used Wade-Giles in their bibliographic records to romanize Chinese. However, another romanization scheme, Pinyin, since its inception in the late 1950s, gained popularity and became an ISO (International Standards Organization) standard - and has since been adopted by most of the world's libraries, except in North America.

After much consultation, the Library of Congress and the two major bibliographic utilities - OCLC and RLIN - agreed that the time has come to make this change, and starting October 1, 2000, Pinyin will be used in all new records. Millions of records already with Wade-Giles data already in these databases will also be converted to Pinyin by April 2001.

As both an active member of the international library community, and a substantial contributor of Chinese records to the OCLC database, HKUST Library will also be converting our records from Wade-Giles to Pinyin.

This conversion is not as straight forward as matching one romanized word from one scheme to another scheme, in part due to the one-to-many relationships between character pronunciations and their written forms. To ensure the integrity and accuracy of the bibliographic databases, careful planning and programming are essential.

In early 1999, the HKUST Library formed a task force to study and implement this change in our system. The first few records were converted in early 2000, followed by much analysis and additional modification. The conversion of bibliographic records in our online catalog has now been completed. The computer program developed by Library staff successfully converted and then reloaded about 100,000 bibliographic records of Chinese language publications.

About 10,000 records with ambiguities were reviewed and edited manually. About 6,000 acquisition records and 3,000 non-Chinese language publications with Wade-Giles data were also converted.

Pinyin has now replaced Wade-Giles for most of our records. You should start using pinyin to search for Chinese language materials in our catalog if you search the romanized form, except personal names. Of course, searching with Chinese characters is unchanged.

In mid-September, we will begin to convert personal names. This is a very complex and difficult issue. In fact, many names will not be converted, since it will be the author's choice as to the form of their romanized name. Library staff are working on a scheme of cross-references so that different forms of names can be used for retrieval. This portion of the project will not be complete until later this year.

Since the conversion program developed by our Systems staff works so well, we thought it would be a good idea to offer it to institutions for their own conversion projects. Compared to other programs available for this purpose, ours requires far less manual intervention and error-checking (e.g. 10-12% of records converted will need to be manually reviewed, versus 100% for the most widely used program).

For details of the HKUST Library conversion project, or to obtain a copy of the software, visit http library.ust.hk/pinyin/

Additional background information on Pinyin conversion is available on the Library of Congress web site (http lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin

MEDIA: How-to's and Hobbies

While Media Resources and Microforms concentrates its collection on materials for academic research and teaching, the mission of broader education is not neglected. A well-rounded person will have hobbies and interests outside of studies.

Many people like to pursue sports like tennis or 太極拳 (Tai Ji Quan). Some examples from the Media collection are the Pro Tennis Video Clinic (Media GV990 .P76 1996) and Tai Chi Chuan for Life: Lessons in the Sun Style (Media GV504 .T352 1995).

Material to help you pursue artistic interests such as painting and singing are also available. You can learn how to paint watercolors from Watercolor Technique (Media ND230 .L43 1990 v. 8), learn how to do traditional Chinese painting with the 20-part series Chinese Brush Painting (Media ND2068 .Y44 1987 v.1-20) or work on your singing with Born to Sing: Complete Voice Training Course (Media [audio cassettes] MT820 .H69 1997).

To find "how-to" videos on these and other subjects, go to the Library catalog. Choose Library catalog subset, Media. Then do a subject search on your interests (e.g. "tennis", "painting - technique", "Chinese painting - technique", etc.). Feel free to ask reference staff or the Media Librarian for help in finding what you want.

WEB: Traditional Chinese Medicine Pathfinder Released

Over the past few years, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been generating more and more interest in the academic community, among business people, and within the government of Hong Kong. In his 1998 policy address, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa said Hong Kong hoped to become an international centre for traditional Chinese medicine.

Here at HKUST, the BRI (Biotechnology Research Centre) TCM Centre concentrates on bioassay, drug development, safety, standardization, and pharmaceutics, while the Hong Kong Traditional Chinese Medicine Research Center (HKTCMRC), a collaborative research venture between UST and the Lee Kum Kee Group Ltd., researches and develops proprietary Chinese medicine products.

For the staff and students involved in these groups, the HKUST community as a whole, and researchers anywhere on the planet, HKUST Library has created a self-help guide (now available on the Library's Server) for resources on TCM. The URL is http library.ust.hk/res/pf/tcm/

The pathfinder is divided into three parts: Research Centers & Programs, Resources at HKUST Library, and Resources from the Internet. By bringing these sources together, it is hoped that researchers and students will have an easier time navigating through the sometime confusing seas of TCM publications. Since TCM is such a broad subject, this pathfinder concentrates on the research interests of faculty at HKUST - with a focus on herbal and pharmacological, rather than clinical, aspects.

Smart Card Use in the Library

The Library is working closely with the campus smart card implementation team. This Fall, a few photocopiers and other devices will be modified to accept the new cards, which are scheduled for wide-scale implementation over the coming year.

接受北京大學授予客座教授答詞 (2000年5月30日 周敏民)

今天非常榮幸能得到北京大學給予我客座教授這項榮譽。 記得第一次來北大是1978 年，那年我們一家四口在國內旅行遊覽了兩個月，留下深刻的印象。 開始與北大圖書 館的交流是1982年的春天，在北大與麥基爾大學的合作計劃下來到北京。 在我從事圖 書館工作的三十多年裏，最値得我回憶的其中一段時間就是1982年在北大講授自動化 並與北大圖書館同事們共同工作的那些日子。

近廿年來，世界、中國及信息科技產生了二十年前我們無法估計，也不可想像的巨大 變化與進步。 北大圖書館也是如此。在潘永祥、莊守經、林被甸及戴隆基四位館長的 領導下，二十年來培養了許多人才，無論在設施、服務及管理上都獲得値得驕傲的成 績。

而我自己在到香港科技大學工作的這十年，能一方面為一個中國人的社會服務，一方 面更易與內地尤其是北大圖書館交流，使我個人生命與工作都更豐富，更有意義，因 此要向北大多年的朋友、同事以及北大的領導們致敬及致謝。

今天接受這個職稱，對我還有一個重要的個人意義。 那就是我的外曾祖父姚永樸及外 曾叔祖姚永概在廿世紀初都曾經在北大中文系擔任教職。 一個多月前從費振剛教授處 取得一本北大中文系的簡介，使我驚喜的是發現上面記載了這項資料。 所以我以極自 豪、又極謙卑的心情，作為我們家庭四代中的第三個人接受北京大學所授予的這項職 稱。

Systems Updates

Advanced Keyword Searching - We will soon be launching a new search engine for the Library Catalog. Based on the Alta-Vista engine, it will finally enable you to do accurate keyword searches for Chinese phrases! Look for an announcement in the coming few weeks.

New Public Workstations - During the Fall term, many of the older public computers in the Library will be upgraded. Some of the older machines will be used to upgrade some of our staff computers.

New Course Reserve Systems - Due to increasing software conflicts with new versions of the Windows OS, Library Systems staff have now replaced the Course Reserve Image Database system. The new software is web-based, but due to copyright restrictions access is still limited to the 8 workstations on 1/F of the Library. We welcome your feedback on this new interface.

Ovid Migration - After 3-and-a-half years of running a regional site for the Ovid databases, we have now moved access directly to the main Ovid server in the United States. This is possible due to the continual improvements in network response time, and will allow us to take advantage of their faster servers, along with some processor-intensive program enhancements - including the ability to search multiple databases simultaneously. revised 30 August, 2000 (C)HKUST Library