The Chair called the meeting to order at 9:15 a.m. He extended a special welcome to
Ms. Chiang and Ms. Jeng who had come from Taiwan to represent Cheng Heng-hsiung.

I. Chair's Report

Mr. Wu thanked Joy Kim for preparing the draft minutes of the membership meeting and the Executive Board meeting held in April 1992 in Washington, D.C. He also thanked James Cheng and Edward Martinique for the minutes of the Program Committee meeting. The Minutes will be distributed to members of the Users Group when finalized.

Mr. Wu reported that, in his capacity as Chair of the Users Group, he had a meeting the previous day (November 6) with Dr. K. Wayne Smith, OCLC President, and Phillis Bova Spies, Vice President for Marketing and Sales, accompanied by Andrew Wang. Dr. Smith assured him of OCLC's firm commitment to its CJK program as a service to the academic community, in spite of the fact that the CJK program has not been a financially profitable operation to OCLC. Dr. Smith expressed his pleasure over RLG's willingness to exchange CJK records directly with OCLC, and stated that OCLC remains ready to offer additional services to its constituencies. He mentioned that a number of major university libraries have migrated from RLIN to OCLC during the past year, and that he expected more to follow. He informed Mr. Wu that the East Asian Library at the University of California, Berkeley was most likely to adopt the OCLC CJK system soon.

II. Name Change of the Users Group

On the advice of OCLC's legal counsel, Mr. Andrew Wang had informed Mr. Wu earlier that using simply "CJK" in the Group's name should not present any problems. Based on this information, Mr. Wu suggested that the Group be renamed "The OCLC CJK Users Group." This was unanimously supported by the Board. The new name will be submitted to the membership for a vote at its next meeting, to be held in March 1993 in Los Angeles.

III. Program Committee's Report

A. Coorperative Retrospective Conversion

James Cheng asked Karl Lo to report the results of his survey on the Current Status of Machine-Readable East Asian libraries. Mr. Lo handed out an updated version of his earlier report with the observation that there are some 1.5 million yet to be converted, and that among the 22 libraries that responded, the National Central Library (Taipei) has the largest number of machine readable records (263,400 out of 657,003). He also pointed out that roman-only records (without CJK scripts) were not included in his survey. There is a signigicant number of these records in existence in the MARC format, including those of University of Michigan, the University of Hawaii, the Library of Congress, and the University of Toronto.

Informal exchanges of information on local activities followed. James Cheng said that he is chairing the University of California East Asian Libraries Cooperative Recon Project. UCLA's East Asian Library has completed its conversion work (95,000 records), thus providing a major building block. UCLA will still participate in cooperative projects concerning analytical cataloging. Eugene Wu mentioned that Harvard's East Asian and Middle Eastern collections are not a part of the University's large recon project contracted with OCLC. Harvard Yenching's high priority is the conversion of some 60,000 records produced between the publication of its book catalogs and the beginning of automated cataloging (the period covered is 1985-1989 for Chinese and Japanese, and 1978-1989 for Korean materials). Harvard-Yenching is currently engaged in the compilation of an annotated catalog of its Chinese rare books collection. The work is being done by Mr. Chen Jin, formerly Assistant Chief of the Rare books Department of the Shanghai Library. Once the catalog is published, the records will be also converted. It was reported that Cornell plans to convert all of its East Asian records to machine-readable form.

In the course of exploring various approaches to cooperative recon, the Board agreed that this group's role should be that of providing leadership to get the project started and of coordination once the project began. Karl Lo suggested that the current Recon Task Force, composed of himself, S.K. Leung of UC-Davis, and Joy Kim of USC, which conducted the survey, be dismissed and a new task force formed with membership from libraries which will actually be participating in the porject. Mr. Lo was asked to contact a select number of RLG and OCLC CJK libraries in order to ascertain their level of interest in such a cooperative recon program, and then recommend to the Board on how such a task force should be organized. He will make a report at the Program Committee's meeting in next March.

B. Task Force on Analytics

Mr. Cheng reported that the Task Force on Analytical Cataloging of Large Monographic Sets is composed of Thomas Lee (Indiana), Min-chih Chou (University of Washington), and Edward Martinique (North Carolina), and himself as Chair. Mr. Chou is responsible for surveying Japanese and Korean sets which contain more than 10 titles each. Mr. Lee is responsible for surveying Chinese titles. Mr. Martinique is to edit the survey results. Mr. Cheng will act as the liaison with RLG CJK libraries and will design a survey form to gather information on the following: what has or has not been analyzed and what is or is not online. Data collection is expected to be completed by January 15, 1993.

Since the former RLG East Asian Program Committee had taken a similar survey, Mr. Cheng suggested that a meeting with RLG libraries would be in order. The Board approved this suggestion and directed the Task Force to meet with its RLG counterpart before the Program Committee meeting next March. (The meeting has since been scheduled for noon on March 24, 1993, following the CEAL plenary session that morning.)

IV. Status of OCLC-NCL Records Exchange Agreement

Ms. Chiang, reporting on behalf of Mr. Cheng, Member-At-Large, who was unable to attend the Board meeting, reported that the National Central Library's first priority at the present time is the development of the National Bibliographic Information Network (NBINET), and that most of NCL's manpower and funds for automation are devoted to this purpose. NCL hopes to make the records created on NBINET available to internet via TANet next year. Regarding the OCLC-NCL exchange agreement, Ms. Chiang stated that NCL had assured Mr. Wang at a meeting with him on June 24, 1992 that the agreement, signed in 1985, is still in force and NCL had recommended that quality enhancements of the NCL records should be a collaborative effort between the NCL and the OCLC CJK users in the U.S. NCL would like to do what it can, but the degree of enhancement activity on NCL's part will depend on the level of funding it receives from the government. NCL agreed that Wade-Giles ronamization of the NCL records should be the first priority, and this has since been approved by the Ministry of Education under which NCL operates. Ms. Chiang reported that the NCL's budget for next fiscal year will contain an expense item for this purpose when the Ministry of Education budget is submitted to the new legislature for approval next year.

Mr. Andrew Wang supplemented Ms. Chiang's remarks by saying that OCLC and NCL entered into the exchange agreement in July, 1985, but there had been little progress in the implementation due to the following two factors: 1) There had been three Directors at the National Central Library since 1985, and each director had his own priorities; and 2) The National Central Library had not had the needed funding and human resources to enhance the Chinese records as required by the OCLC CJK users. Mr. Eugene Wu, in his capacity as the Chair of the OCLC CJK350 Users Group, had expressed his concern and explained the importance of this project to authorities in Taiwan on his trips to there, and Mr. Wang himself had also met several times in Taipei with the staff of the National Central Library on this matter, most recently on June 24, 1992. The National Central Library agreed at that time to reconsider its priorities, and stated that would submit a proposal for additional funding in support of this project.

V. OCLC CJK Activities -- Current and Planned

A. OCLC CJK Plus Field Test

Mr. Wang reported that ten research libraries in the U.S.A. participated in the field test of the OCLC CJK Plus System. Testing began in early September, 1992, and the feedback was by and large positive. The three-month test will conclude at the end of November, 1992. OCLC development staff will then modify the CJK Plus software as necessary, and the production version will become available in January, 1993. The OCLC CJK Plus System, based on a 486 Workstation with MicroSoft Windows capability, represents the state-of-the-art technology. Six libraries have already signed purchase agreement for the CJK Plus Workstations: UCLA (4 workstations), UCSD (2), UC Irvine (1), Pittsburgh (2), Texas (1), and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (2). OCLC will continue to support the operation of the CJK350 system through the end of 1993.

B. PRISM, etc.

The main task for the OCLC CJK Program in 1993 will be to move the CJK System from the OCLC First System over to the PRISM Service. Once moved, the searching capability of the OCLC CJK System will be greatly enhanced to include key word, Boolean, and subject search capability. OCLC will begin investigation of making PRISM service available via the internet in order to benefit users worldwide. A Cataloging Microenhancer Plus program with CJK capability will also be investigated.

C. Conversion of the Chinese National Bibliography of the Republican Era,

1911-1949

Phase One of this project was concluded on October 1, 1992, with a total of 14,915 titles having been converted to machine-readable form. The first group of six National Library of China staff assinged to this project has since returned to China. (The project has been staffed by one full-time OCLC employee in addition to the NLC staff). Six more librarians from NLC will come to OCLC to continue this projet; OCLC is currently, processing the necessary paperwork for their trip to the U.S. The grant application to The National Endowment for the Humanities to help fund the project was denied, with no explanation. Currently the $240,000 from the Luce Foundation is the sole source of funding, covering only the direct cost. OCLC absorbs all the other costs of the project. The second (and final) phase is projected to convert an additional 15,000 titles, to bring the total number of titles converted to 30,000. The Users Group's request for prioritizing the conversion by selected subject areas according to the needs of the U.S. libraries was not supported by The National Library of China. The titles converted during Phase One represent the following subject areas: linguistics (2910 records), law (4536 records), philosophy (4029 records), and literature (3440 records--on-going). Eugene Wu asked Mr. Wang about OCLC's plans for additional funding. Mr. Wang responded that The Henry Luce Foundation seems to have a shortage of funds at present, but other possible sources will be explored. (Ten foundations were initially contacted by Mr. Wang to start the project.) Mr. Wu suggested the Title II-C grant.

D. Japan MARC

Not much progress has been made since the last Board meeting in April, 1992. The LC-Kinokuniya contract must be finalized before OCLC may attempt to obtain from Kinokuniya the Japan MARC tapes. The Board agreed to write to Susan Tarr, Chief, Cataloging Distribution Service, Library of Congress, in whose hands the matter resides, to urge an early resolution of this matter. The Board also agreed to ask Maureen Donovan, Chair of CEAL, and Amy Vladeck Heinrich, Chair of the National Coordinating Committee on Japanese Research Libraries (NCC) to join in writing similar letters on behalf of CEAL and NCC, respectively.

E. Waseda University's Database, etc.

Mr. Wang visited Japan in May, 1992, and engaged in a negotiation with Waseda University on loading Waseda's Japanese records into the OCLC database. In exchange for Waseda's approximately half-a-million Japanese records, OCLC would give the University the Chinese and Korean records in the OCLC database. Mr. Wang will follow up with this negotiation.

Mr. Wang also visited Korea and met with the Director of the National Central Library, who expressed an interest in tape exchange. The Committee on Scholarly Communication with China has also expressed an interest in working with OCLC on its proposed project to microfilm the Chinese materials published during the Sino-Japanese War period, 1937-1945.

F. OCLC Technical Processing Services

Mr. Wang said that, in addition to developing a new CJK system and enhancing the CJK database, OCLC offers contract services for retrospective conversion and cataloging to libraries around the world. Currently nine libraries are using OCLC's CJK cataloging service (seven non-CJK users and two CJK users). Two additional libraries are using OCLC's CJK card service. James Cheng asked about the lack of call numbers in RLIN CJK records loaded on the tape exchange program. Mr. Wang responded that the reason is because OCLC has no way of tagging the RLIN libraries' call numbers since RLIN does not distinguish whether the numbers are LC, Dewey, or local. Hisako Kotaka said that that problem could be solved by using the 035 field ("system control number").

VI. Election of a New Board

Since the current Board's term of office expires in March, 1993, Mr. Wu appointed a three-member Nominating Committee, as provided for in the Bylaws: Karl Lo (Chair), Teruko Kyuma Chin, and Joy Kim. The committee's charge is to formulate ballots with two candidates for each of the following positions: Vice Chair/Chair-Elect, Chinese Officer, Japanese Officer, Korean Officer, and Member-At-Large.

VII. Program for the 1993 Users Group Meeting

The meeting logistics at the 1993 CEAL annual meeting were tentatively set as outlined below. Andrew Wang graciouly agreed to reserve rooms for all of the following meetings:

March 24, Wednesday: 4-6 p.m., Executive Board Working Dinner

March 26, Friday: 9 a.m.- 12 p.m., Program Committee Meeting

March 27, Saturday: 8 a.m.- 12 a.m., Membership Meeting

The meeting adjourned at 3:50 p.m., followed by a slide-show and a tour of OCLC. The dinner, hosted by Andrew Wang, Provided an opportunity for the Board to meet with all OCLC CJK professional staff.