Xia Speaks at Council for East Asian Librarians Conference

Indianapolis

"Scholarly Communication in East Asia: Modernization and Traditions" was presented by SLIS faculty member Jingfeng Xia at the Council for East Asian Librarians (CEAL) in Atlanta, Georgia, held April 1-3, 2008. The presentation comes a little more than a month after the publication of the book Scholarly Communication in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, edited by Xia.

According to the CEAL website, the Council's objectives include: "(a) serving as a faculty-librarians' forum for the discussion of East Asian library issues of common concern; (b) formulating programs for the development of East Asian library resources, bibliographic controls, and access; and (c) improving and enhancing interlibrary and international cooperation in East Asian library development and services."

Abstract for "Scholarly Communication in East Asia"

Modernization is a universal phenomenon. "Modern" is a relative word with varying meanings historically. Today's modernization has a strong emphasis on information and communications technology, so called ICT. The rapid advances in ICT have brought revolution to scholarly communication in terms of information acquisition, preservation and dissemination. In East Asia, the development of ICT represented a complicated situation where long-standing civilizations created unique cultural values and political practices. ICT was introduced with modifications to fit in local systems. Localization indicates the adaptation of new technologies and makes them more efficient and effective for native environments. In the process of modernization and localization, there raised the necessity of balancing the contrast between tradition and innovation, contrast between individualization and standardization, and contrast between regionalization and internationalization. These contrasts characterize the undertaking of scholarly communication in East Asia. My presentation discussed the contrasts from historical, regional, economic, and cultural perspectives, and concluded that contrast does not necessarily symbolize conflict, but can be the ideal style of harmony, that differences in coexistence.