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SoCal CALA Chapter Welcomes Visiting Chinese Library Directors
After more than six months countless planning, arrangements, communication and coordination with major libraries in Southern California, the Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA) Southern California Chapter (CALA-SCA) IMLS Hosting Committee members: Sally C. Tseng (CALA Honorary Executive Director), Maggie Wang (CALA-SCA Past President) and Ying Xu (CALA-SCA Past President) welcome two visiting Chinese library directors: Ms. Jizhen Song of Chongqing Children's Library and Dr. Shuiqiao Wang of Yunnan Provincial Library to the Southern California. This Visiting Program was part of the "Think Globally, Act Globally" Project funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). We accompanied Ms. Song and Dr. Wang to visit six libraries with notable collections and exemplary services from July 14 to 18, 2009. They are: the County of Los Angeles Public Library (CoLAPL), Lawndale Library, Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL), LAPL Chinatown Branch, the Cerritos Library, and the Monterey Park Bruggemeyer Library.
CALA is a partner of this 2009 IMLS Grant Project. As a Chapter, we want to do our best to ensure these events were successful and Ms. Song and Dr. Wang received rich information resources, as well as had opportunities to introduce Chinese libraries to American colleagues.
Visiting highlights included:
- Ms. Song and Dr. Wang visited, observed and received first-hand information on library operations and services of major public libraries in Los Angeles area that are serving diverse communities.
- We met with library directors, managers, and department heads to discuss their roles and responsibilities -- shared information of each library’s administration, management, organization, policies, staff hiring and evaluation procedures, services, technologies applications, and together with their unique library architectures, and many more. There were discussions among Ms. Song, Dr. Wang and library directors and those presented.
- Each library was very thoughtful to provide a very informative guided tour, to look at the uniqueness of their notable collections, services, online catalogs and databases, and to observe the use of these public libraries. We were especially honored that directors from several libraries personally provided the guided tours during their busy schedules. Their warm welcome and hospitalities were deeply appreciated.
- We were invited to attend the Board of Library Commissioners Meeting at the Los Angeles Public Library. The Library Board is a new concept to the Chinese library directors. Ms. Song and Dr. Wang were very interested in this library management structure and they told us that they would bring this structure back to China.
- Ms. Song and Dr. Wang were invited to speak at the LAPL Thursdays@Central program and at the County of Los Angeles Public Library Headquarters on July 16 and 17 respectively. Sally Tseng worked very hard to prepare PowerPoint presentations for them. These presentations include introductions to Chinese libraries, public libraries, their administration, management, organizations, collections, statistics, services, rules and regulations, the National Cultural Information Resources Sharing Project, assessment of public libraries, the Chongqing Library, and theYunnan Provincial Library, etc. The presentations were very well received. The audiences were deeply impressed by the library buildings, organizations, services, assessment and evaluation systems, and projects of the Chinese public libraries. These presentations provided great opportunities to exchange information about library operations between China and the United States.
- Considering the limited time in visiting these large libraries for Ms. Song and Dr. Wang had each library was very kind to prepare package of handouts, CDs, and other items on library services for them so they could bring back to China. We sincerely appreciate the generosities of the above libraries for sharing their most informative, useful and invaluable resources with the visitors.
- In addition to the resourceful handouts, we were especially impressed by the department heads at the County of Los Angeles Public Library system for their well prepared PowerPoint presentations on their services of Children and Youth, Emergent Literacy, Teen and Young Adults, and Teens Services. They were very generous to let us downloaded their PowerPoint presentations for Ms. Song and Dr. Wang.
- Ms. Song and Dr. Wang were very impressed with these library systems, histories, beautiful architectures, interior designs and displays, their general and special collections, facilities, public and technical services, their strong commitments to excellence in users services, implementation of innovative programs to serve children, teens and adults as well as the library directors’ leadership in staff development, training and advancement. They told us that they greatly enjoyed the visits and learned much from each library which will be very helpful to their work. They will take the information and the valuable handouts back to China to share with their colleagues. They stated that libraries in China will be greatly benefited with what they had learned from these libraries. At the end of the tour, Ms. Song and Dr. Wang expressed their sincere appreciation toward all the libraries, the library directors and their staff participated in this IMLS Chinese Library Directors Visiting Program. They also expressed their heartfelt appreciation to the CALA-SCA Hosting Committee.
- The visit was exceptionally informative, productive and successful – exceeded our expectation! We are inspired by each library’s effective and quality services for the diverse community. We see good results for our hard work and Ms. Song and Dr. Wang had a great experience.
Acknowledgements:
First of all, CALA-SCA would like to thank IMLS for granting this Project. We sincerely appreciate all the library directors, administrators, department heads, library managers and staff for arranging and organizing very informative meetings, discussions, guided tours, warm welcome and hospitality. We thank them for their enthusiastic support in hosting these visits, for their well planned schedules, efficiency, effectiveness and leadership in making these fruitful and successful visits! We would like to especially thank all IMLS Grant partners who had worked very hard to contribute to the success of these visits. Special thanks to the leaders at the China Ministry of Culture, the Library Society of China, the Chinese American Librarians Association, the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and to Dr. Shuyong Jiang, Haipeng Li, and Dr. ShaLi Zhang for their able assistance.
We would like to extend our sincere appreciation to Don Buckley, Anne Connor, Martin Gomez, Robert Seal, Margaret Donnellan Todd, Helen Tsai, Sally Tseng, Kuang Pei Tu, Maggie Wang, Ying Xu for their thoughtful arrangements, coordination, and preparing handouts for us; to Debbie Anderson, Pam Broussard, Tina Carwile, Barbara Custen, Dan Golden, Dora Ho, Fred Hungerford, Terri Maguire, Melissa McCollum, David Mill, Jocelyn Mullen, Sophia Wang, Beth Wilson, and other colleagues at these 6 libraries, for the part they played in making these visits so successful. I would like to thank Jeanny Chan, Julia Chang, Wenwen Zhang for their excellent translations of the conversation into Chinese for our visitors which greatly enhanced their understanding of the discussions. All the above colleagues had worked very hard to contribute to the success of these visits and had done Great Jobs! Thank you very much!
L to R: Beth Wilson, Robert Seal, Sally Tseng, Margaret Donnellan Todd (County Librarian) County of Los Angeles Public Library), Shuiqiao Wang, Jizhen Song, Melissa McCollum, and Wenwen Zhang
L to R: Jeanny Chan, Jizhen Song, Shuiqiao Wang, Don Buckley (Cerritos City Librarian) Shuiqiao Wang, Sally Tseng, and Ying Xu.
L to R: Anne Connor (Director of the Los Angeles Central Library), Jizhen Song, Martin Gomez (Los Angeles City Librarian) Shuiqiao Wang, and Sally Tseng
Submitted to California Libraries by:
Sally C. Tseng
Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA)
CALA Honorary Executive Director
Posted on November 25, 2009 9:10 AM | Permalink