v.4, no.3, Win 1998

 

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Volume 4, No. 3, Winter 1998 (ISSN 1084-9068)

President's Message
1. Membership News
2. Announcement of Grants for U.S.-China Legal Cooperation
3. Law Librarianship in Singapore: A View from the Trenches
4. Exchange Program with Korean Libraries
5. National Library of China Joins OCLC
6. Need Chinese Journal Articles?
7. Electronic Corner: Meta-Data Glossary

As I sat in front of my desk and labored over my Appellate Advocacy brief, my mind turned to our last meeting at Anaheim. (Yes, I know I was not concentrating. An indicator of my interest in writing that brief, I am sure.) Shortly before the meeting a young friend told me that it was all very nice to see other people who share similar interest or background, but, in her innocent and honest way associated usually with youth, she asked, "What can the Caucus really do for my career?" I mumbled something like fostering connection and the importance of networking. But being one who cannot think on her feet, I was not impressed by my own answer. This question made me pondering for the rest of the day. By the end of our meeting, however, I believed that I had found the answer. Inspired by the panel discussion given by Paul Fu and Frank Liu, I could easily say that we provide our members support for career development.

We are a unique group of law librarians because of our cultural background, education, training, and interests. While AALL addresses many aspects of our needs, there are concerns only familiar to us. Fortunately, some of us already have traveled good part of the path and are willing to share their experience. Frank and Paul are two very fine examples. This year, along the same vine, Wei Luo has organized a panel discussion on middle management for our caucus members. For your convenience, this panel discussion will follow immediately after our business meeting. If you are interested in career development building on your current foundation, or simply feel that you can handle more responsibility, this is a discussion planned for you. We also love to have the old hands to come and provide us their personal experience.

On the other hand, nothing can be more helpful and personal than having a mentor who understands your needs and can give ready advice. I can testify from my experience the benefit of having a mentor and how satisfying to help a mentee. Without my mentors= advice I would not be where I am now. My mentees certainly opened my eyes to issues that I was not aware of. To assist our members to locate the perfect mentor/mentee, our Mentorship Committee is planning a mentorship program. Look out for further information that shows up in your e-mail!

Cossette T. Sun, Law Library Director of Bernard E. Witkin Alameda County Law Library at Oakland California has been nominated to run for the AALL Executive Board. Let's congratulate Cossette and give her our supports.

Let's welcome Yuan Yao to our Asian-American law librarian community. Yuan is now Head of Cataloging at Georgetown University Law Library. He served as Principal Cataloger for seven years at the main campus library of Georgetown University. Yuan received his BA in English from Xiamen University in 1982. He received his MLS from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1987.

We are sorry to know that Weiwei Wang has left her position as Head of Technical Service at the Law Library of University of Nevada at Las Vegas. She and her husband moved to Irvine, California. She works for a law firm there. We miss her and wish her well. Her email address is wwangjd98@yahoo.com.

Dear AALLC members:

The following is the announcement of Grants for U.S.-China Legal Cooperation. Please take a look at it and forward the message to the your institution's faculty or lawyers who are interested in Chinese law. If you are interested in U.S.-China Legal Cooperation, you may try to apply for a grant from the U.S.-China Legal Cooperation Foundation. Currently, I am working with my boss, the Associate Dean in Information at Washington University School of Law, on a grant proposal to fund our project on the topic of introducing the American law codification system to China.

The U.S.-China Legal Cooperation Fund announces the availability of grants to enhance U.S.-China legal cooperation, as contemplated by Presidents Bill Clinton and Jiang Zemin.

Proposals for projects that U.S. and Chinese colleagues will conduct jointly or in close cooperation will be considered for grants up to a maximum of $50,000.

The Fund expects to invite grant proposals at semi-annual intervals in the years 1999 and 2000. Proposals submitted by the deadline stated in each invitation will be considered with other proposals received in the six (6)-month period prior to that deadline and the Fund will determine in its discretion whether, and in what amount, any of those proposals will be funded.

Further information, including the first deadline for submission of proposals, the kinds of proposals desired and instructions for their preparation and submission, will be continuously available from late November, 1998 until 2000 at the following world-wide web site: http://www.uschinalegalcoop.org/.

The Fund respectfully requests the assistance of recipients of this announcement to disseminate it to colleagues, constituents, members and affiliated organizations and individuals who may have interest in it.

Wei Luo, J.D. & M.L.S. 
Associate Law Librarian and Director of Technical Services 
Washington University School of Law Library 
Campus Box 1171 
One Brookings Drive 
St. Louis, MO 63130-4899 
(314) 935-8045 
Fax: (314) 935-8149 
http://ls.wustl.edu/Chinalaw

Introduction

The practice of law in Singapore has become very challenging, due partly to the economic woes currently affecting South East Asia and also partly to the changes introduced (or to be introduced) by legislation. The practice of law librarianship follows a parallel path.

Currently, only lawyers admitted to the Singapore Bar may practice Singapore law. There are moves to allow "offshore firms" (i.e. firms whose lawyers have not been admitted to the Singapore Bar) to practice Singapore law.

Looking out

As the first professional librarian hired by a law firm in Singapore, I started out with a keen desire to meet the needs of library users and a thirst to learn all that I could about the research needs of a large law firm with a general legal practice. I was fortunate to have assistants who were already employed by the firm and were therefore familiar with the environment. The team currently comprises one professional librarian (myself) and two assistants. One other person, apart from helping out with the library, also has other duties in our corporate department.

I discovered early on that the research needs of the various departments were very different. The litigation department tended to appreciate my skills at LEXIS & CD-ROM searching, while the corporate department needed more help obtaining business related information. My personal affinity for "computer assisted legal research" (which is a generic term I will be using to describe Internet, LEXIS and CD-ROM searches) led to the acquisition of a select number of CD-ROMs, which are well used for legal research. The LEXIS subscription was an ongoing one, and I merely brought my skills to bear to provide user training and ongoing assistance regarding its search techniques. With the increasing availability of legal information on the Internet, I have learned how to find and use the relevant web sites and tools. The migration of a number of Singapore legal research databases to the Internet platform made it easier to lobby for (and obtain!) Internet access from terminals placed in the firm's library.

In order to address the need for business related information, I started an online index for all the periodicals which the firm subscribes to. The index has more than 13000 records and is available on the firm-wide LAN. I believe that this is the only such index available in any law firm in Singapore. The index covers legal and business materials and takes into account the particular practice interests of the firm. At this point in time, certain kinds of information are not easily available in Singapore, due perhaps to the relatively new information infrastructure. For example, information on the various treaties signed by Singapore is often found as press releases reported in the newspapers. An index incorporating these press releases was therefore necessary and important.

I also developed into a legal research trainer, giving training sessions to our pupils when they begin their pupillage. I would say that I augment the legal research skills training which our pupils acquire in the university. I should also mention that legal research on Singapore law is not particularly straightforward, as we have a unique legal history and our legislation draws its inspiration from many jurisdictions.

Looking Ahead

Change is a part of any environment. So far, I have been able to enjoy and adapt to the differences.

The challenge as I see is twofold: 1.) To keep up-to-date with the developments in Singapore law and Singapore business development; and 2.) To bring up the level of respect for law librarians in Singapore by setting the standards and expanding the scope for law librarianship.

Libraries acquire materials through purchases, gifts or exchanges. Because of the cost and unavailability of certain materials, some libraries have made use of exchange programs. Participation in an exchange program would be mutually beneficial in expanding resources beyond material normally obtained through purchases or gifts. In addition, this partnership would raise awareness of your law school in Asia. There are five major Korean libraries that are interested in establishing exchange relationships with U.S. academic libraries.

As you may know, Korea’s law schools are colleges of law under general university administration. Unlike U.S. law schools, Korea’s law schools offer only bachelor’s degree. Therefore, the acquisition and processing of library materials are conducted by the university's main library. The following is a list of libraries that are interested in exchanging materials with US libraries.

1. National Assembly Library of Republic of Korea

http://www.assembly.go.kr/

Address: #1, Yoido-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul 150-703, Korea 
Contact person:

Jin-Sang Lee 
Director of Acquisition & Processing Bureau 
Tel: (02) 788-7521, 788-4102 
Fax: (02) 788-4295 
E-mail: jinlee@nanet.go.kr 
Publication: Legislative Information and Research Review 
See http://www.nanet.go.kr/nal/emain.htm

2. Supreme Court Library

http://www.scourt.go.kr/menu_eng.html

Address: 967 Seocho-Dong, Seocho-Gu, Seoul 137-750, Korea 
Contact person: 
Sang-Keun Kim 
Judge, Seoul High Court and Deputy Director-General 
Tel: (02) 3480-1553 
Fax: (2) 533-6114 
E-mail: sctlib@chollian.dacom.co.kr 
Publication: Supreme Court decisions

3. Seoul National University Library

Address: San 56-1, Shillim-dong, Kwanak-gu, Seoul 151-742, Korea 
Contact person: 
Kyo-Hoon Chin, Prof. and Library Director, 
Tel: 82-02-88-5280 
Noh-Oug Chung, Librarian, Exchange & Gift Division, 
Tel: 82-02-880-8075 
Fax: 82-02-878-2730, 
E-mail: jnong@plaza.snu.ac.kr

Publication: Pophak, Seoul law journal

4. Ewha Womans University Library

Address: 11-1, Daehyun-dong, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul

Contact person:

Bong-Hee Kim, Library Director, 
Tel: 82-02-360-3121 
Kyung-Jae Lee, Exchange & Gift Division, 
Tel: 82-02-360-3124 
E-mail: lifelid@mm.ewha.ac.kr

Publication: Pophak nonjib, Ewha law journal

5. Yonsei University Library

Address: 134 Sinchon-dong, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 120-749 Korea

Contact person:

Shang-Gi Kim, Assistant Director, 
Central Library, Tel: (02) 361-3332, 3334 
Fax: (02) 364-8773 
Won-Tae Heo, Serials Librarian, Tel: 361-3311, Fax:393-6803 
E-mail: heowon@bubble.yonsei.ac.kr

Publication: Pophak yongu, Yonsei law review

For reference questions on the Korean law, contact:

Sung-Yoon Cho 
Assistant Chief, 
Far Eastern Law Division, Library of Congress, 
Washington, D.C. 20540 
Tel: (202) 707-5085, (202) 707-9826

Sang-Keun Kim 
Judge, Seoul High Court and Deputy Director-General 
Tel: (02) 3480-1553, Fax: (2) 533-6114, 
E-mail: sctlib@chollian.dacom.co.kr

Woo-Jin Noh 
Head of Legal Documents 
National Assembly Library of Republic of Korea 
Tel: (02) 788-4232, Fax: (02) 788-4402, 
E-mail: bada@nanet.go.kr 

According to Library Journal (Feb. 1, 1999), National Library of China has become OCLC newest member. The National Library will do its current cataloging online with OCLC and will participate in the OCLC Interlibrary Loan service. According to OCLC, the Chinese Library is the world's fifth largest in terms of total collection size (21 million items), houses the largest collection of that country's literature including items dating back as far as 700 years. It serves as both a research library and national repository. For additional information, please contact Nita Dean at 614-761-5002. More information about the National Library of China is available on their Web site at http://www.nlc.gov.cn/etext.htm.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education (December 8, 1998), librarians at the University of Pittsburgh have set up a Web-based system that enables researchers to retrieve journal articles from China. This Web-based system is called the Gateway Service Center of Chinese Academic Journal Publications. The Digital Document Delivery Center provides free delivery of full-text copies of Chinese-language academic journal articles to any research in the United States. The Center focuses on the delivery of Chinese-language academic journal articles that are not available in the collections of US research libraries. Journal articles are transmitted electronically via the Internet from the Chinese libraries, to Pittsburgh, where they are printed and sent to you via Unites States mail. For more information, please visit their web site at http://www.library.pitt.edu/gateway/in dex.html.

New words or terms show up from time to time. Some of them are quite confusing. For instance, the word "meta-data" is used a lot in the late 1990s. The interesting thing is that the word "Metadata^®" is a registered trademark since 1986. A different form, such as "meta-data" or "meta data", should be used to differentiate it from the one word "Metadata^®". Since the meta-data terms are widely used in the library world, we may want to have a better idea of what they represent. Below is a selected list of terms related to meta-data and their official Web sites if available. The list is not comprehensive at all. Additions and/or corrections are welcome.

Metadata^® is a trademark for a company.

Meta-data Schemes are systematic plans or projects of using meta-data structure and tags to collect, format, and/or embed data for information presentation and/or for information storage and retrieval. Examples of meta-data schemes are: MARC, GILS, SGML, Dublin Core.

Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM)ⁱⁱⁱ is designed for providing a common set of terminology and definitions for the documentation of digital geospatial data in order to determine the availability of a set of geospatial data, its fitness for an intended use, the means of accessing it, and to successfully transfer the set of geospatial data. The standard establishes the names of data elements and compound elements (groups of data elements) to be used for these purposes, the definitions of these elements, and information about the values that are to be provided for the data elements.

Document Type Definition (DTD) refers to the definition of a document type in the Standard Generalized Markup Language, consisting of a set of mark-up tags and their interpretation.

Dublin Core (DC)^iv, designed for tagging Internet resources to facilitate resource discovery, is a rising star in the Internet world. Dublin Core is getting more and more significant in the meta-data world because of its wide support by various groups internationally. The Dublin Core is consisting of fifteen basic elements: Title, Author/Creator, Subject/Keywords, Description, Publisher, Other Contributor, Date, Resource Type, Format, Resource Identifier, Source, Language, Relation, Coverage, and Rights Management. Each element is optional and repeatable.

Encoded Archival Description (EAD)^v, using the Standard Generalized Markup Language, is a standard for encoding machine-readable finding aids, such as inventories, registers, indexes, and other documents created by archives, libraries, museums, and manuscript repositories, so that the documents can be made available electronically through the World Wide Web. EAD has three components: the EAD Header contains information describing the finding aid itself, the Front Matter contains prefatory matter incorporating information useful for the display or publication of the finding aid, and the Archival Description contains the actual description of the archival materials and associated administrative and contextual information.

Government Information Locator Service (GILS)^vi, sometimes called Global Information Locator Service, is a collection of agency-based information locators and associated information services. The service identifies information resources throughout the federal government, describes the information available in those resources, and provides assistance in obtaining the information. The types of resources described in GILS include databases, hotlines, clearinghouses, and catalogs of publications.

HyperText Markup Language (HTML)^vii, built on top of the Standard Generalized Markup Language, is a hypertext document format used on the World Wide Web to specify how documents and graphics should be formatted and displayed.

MAchine-Readable Cataloging (MARC)^viii is an industry-wide standard for the representation and exchange of data in library catalogs in machine-readable form. A MARC record is composed of three elements: the record structure, the content designation, and the data content of the record. The record structure is an implementation of the American National Standard for Information Interchange (ANSI/NISO Z39.2). The content designation contains tags, codes, and conventions established explicitly to identify and further characterize the data elements within a record. The content of the data elements is usually defined by standards outside the MARC formats, such as Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR). The MARC record structure is consisted of three main components: the Leader, the Directory, and the Variable Fields.

Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)^ix is an international standard for the description of marked-up electronic text. It is a markup language that specifies the rules for markup and defines the relationship between a document's content and its structure. By removing the presentation part from the document's content data and structure, the Standard Generalized Markup Language allows document-based information to be shared and re-used across applications and computer platforms in an open, vendor-neutral format. Standard Generalized Markup Language based meta-data formats, such as Encoded Archival Description (EAD), HyperText Markup Language (HTML), Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), are widely adopted for encoding electronic resources.

Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)^x, implemented as an SGML Document Type Definition (DTD), is an international project to develop a set of generic guidelines for the representation of textual materials in electronic form in order to facilitate the interchange of electronic texts for scholarly research. Two core tag sets are available to all TEI documents. The first core tag set defines elements which may appear in almost any kind of document. The second core tag set defines the header which provides bibliographic information for the electronic text. The header serves somewhat similar to an electronic title page or a catalog record for the electronic text. It has four major divisions. The file description contains traditional bibliographic material, detailing title, intellectual responsibility and publication or distribution information relating to an electronic text. The source description allows an encoder to specify the source or sources from which a text has been derived, using traditional bibliographic concepts. The encoding description provides vital information about editorial conventions or policies, design decisions and even the selection of tags actually used within the document. The profile description is used to group together a wide range of additional descriptive information. 

^Footnotes:

1. Data from the Metadata^® Company Web page: "What is meta data/metadata". http://www.metadata.com/metadata.html
2. Definition from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC). http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/index. html
3. See the official Web site of the standard at http://www.fgdc.gov/metadata/contstan.h tml.
4. See the official Web site of the Dublin Core at http://purl.org/DC/.
5. See the official Web site of the Encoded Archival Description at http://lcweb.loc.gov/ead/. RLG also provides a very helpful site for the application of EAD: RLG Recommended Application Guidelines for EAD at http://www.rlg.org/rlgead/tool2.html.
6. See the home page of GILS at http://www.gils.net/.
7. See A Dictionary of HTML META Tags for more information on HTML tags. http://vancouver-webpages.com/META/.
8. See Library of Congress MARC Standards at http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/. See also the General Introduction section of the USMARC Concise Formats for more details about the components of a MARC record.
9. International Organization for Standardization, ISO 8879: Information processing---Text and office systems---Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), ([Geneva]: ISO, 1986). More information about SGML can be found on The SGML/XML Web Page at http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/sgm l-xml.html.
10. See the home page of the Text Encoding Initiative at http://www-tei.uic.edu/orgs/tei/.

This Newsletter is edited by Hua Li, Cataloging/Reference Librarian, Creighton University Law Library. For comments or suggestions, please call the editor at (402) 280-2283 or email: Huali@culaw.creighton.edu.

For technical assistance, please contact the webmaster for the Newsletter Wei Luo (LUO@wulaw.wustl.edu), Washington University School of Law Library, St. Louis, MO.