| The University of Queensland East Asian Collection forms part of the Social Science and Humanities Library. The resources available consist of books, journals, reference materials, audio and video materials. The library collects works in all languages taught by the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies, namely Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indonesian. The collection covers subjects as diverse as culture, languages, linguistics, literature, social sciences, economics, history, political science, philosophy and religion. The East Asian Collection is maintained through regular collection development activity as well as donations from the university community, graduates and the greater community. Special thanks should be extended to the Japan Foundation and the Australian Chinese Embassy whose generous donations to the library over the years have enriched the collection. The library has a substantial collection of audio and audio-visual resources to support language teaching and film study which is an area of research and teaching significance for the School. The AV collection is expanded continuously through both the purchase of commercial products and the recording of off-air (from Foxtel and SBS) of foreign language films and documentaries providing a wide variety of films to support the School's research and teaching. The film collection was significantly enhanced in 2001 by a Research Infrastructure Funds (RIF) grant for the acquisition of foreign language films. The library has acquired a large collection of feature films in a variety of formats including video, VCD and DVD, including classic Chinese epics A Romance of Three Kingdoms and The Dream of the Red Chamber, and the Japanese animations Spirited Away and Astro Boy. Interpreting and translating material is also significant in the Collection, supporting the postgraduate Chinese and Japanese interpreting and translating course. In 2002, the Trados Corporate Translation Solution Software was acquired from the Research Infrastructure Funds (RIF) for the purchase of translation and interpretation resources. Trados through its Translator's Workbench compiles a linguistic database in the background while translators work with the word processor or text editor of their choice. It stores source text and its corresponding translation in language pairs called 'translation units'. It integrates with Microsoft Word and offers support to various document formats including ASP.NET; HTML; SGML/XML; PowerPoint; Excel; and PageMaker. A special terminal is reserved in the library for the postgraduate students to use this software. The UQ East Asian Collection is, however, comparatively small. Specific challenges in collection development which need to be addressed include sourcing Out of Print material and foreign language films with limited distribution, ordering Asian languages resources that are not available within Australia and ordering material via the Internet. The experience of sourcing and purchasing Asian language publications and feature films for the RIF grants has suggested that accepted collection development policies and practices for instance dealing only with known vendors and not purchasing direct via the Internet - may need to be revised in the interest of maintaining a cutting edge collection. |