Bridge to a Treasure House: A Collaborative Business Model for Indexing the Korean Classics Hanguk Y

1
Bridge to a Treasure House A Collaborative
Business Model for Indexing the Korean Classics
Hanguk Yoktae Munjip Chongso????????
March 26, 2009 CEAL/CKM Annual Meeting,
Chicago, Illinois, USA

• Prof Hsianghoo CHING (???)
• Celine CHEUNG (???)
• Run Run Shaw Library, City University of Hong Kong

2
Background

• Acquisition of Hanguk yoktae munjip chongso
  ????????(3,000 vol.)
• City University of Hong Kong (CityU) Library
  acquired this set of highly valuable Korean
  classics collection in Aug. 2006
• The first and only library in Hong Kong holding
  this collection
• To support the Korean studies as well as World
  Civilization studies within the universitys
  general education curriculum

3
Background (contd)

• Hanguk yoktae munjip chongso ????????(3,000
  vol.)
• Contains comprehensive resources on Korean
  culture written in classical Chinese by
  thousands of Korean authors
• Covers works from 7th century to early 20th
  century
• Records the development of Sino-Korean
  relationship
• Includes a wide range of topics philosophy,
  history, arts, politics, social sciences,
  economy, military, geography and astrology
• High research value for Sino-Korean relationship
  studies
• Highly attracted to not only local scholars and
  students but also visiting researchers from
  overseas and Mainland China

4
Indexing Project Rationale

• Scholars expressed their high interest in this
  collection
• Only a few academic institutions in Asia
  especially in the Greater China Region have this
  set of books, so high inter-library loan demand
  is foreseeable
• Current bibliographical information in the
  library catalog and the existing reference tools
  are considered inadequate for researchers
• Subject keywords as well as detailed content
  information such as article/essay/poem titles
  would be more helpful for identifying materials
  they want
• A comprehensive indexing project is thus proposed
• The outcome of the project shall make the
  collection more approachable and easier to use
• The project shall benefit scholars, researchers,
  faculties and students who plan to initiate
  research projects on Sino-Korean history and
  culture.

5
Bibliographical information in CityU Library
Catalog

• CityU Library has cataloged all the volumes of
  the 3000-vol set according to OCLC full level
  Bibliographic Formats and Standards
• http//lib.cityu.edu.hk/
• Records retrievable in CityU library OPAC by
  author, title, keyword, in McCune-Reischauer
  romanization form as well as the original
  scripts, i.e. Chinese characters

6
(No Transcript)
7
Existing reference tools

• Two sets of reference materials published by
  Kyongin Munhwasa (???????), both compiled by Kim
  Song-hwan (???)
• Hanguk yoktae munjip chongso mongnok
  ??????????
• Hanguk yoktae munjip chongso mongnok saegin
  ????????????
• Useful but not detail enough. Author names
  period, and book titles were indexed. But no
  keyword/subject index and no individual article
  level title index

8
Existing reference tools (contd)

• Hanguk yoktae munjip chongso mongnok??????????
  
• - Summarized the content by listing the formats
  of the works

Summary of content of v.7-10
9
Existing reference tools (contd)

• Hanguk yoktae munjip chongso mongnok saegin
  ????????????
• 3 vols
• v.1. author name index arranged by period
  (???????)
• v.2. book title index arranged by Korean
  alphabets (???????)
• v.3. author name index arranged by Korean
  alphabets (???????)
• Limited its usage to only the readers with
  knowledge of the Korean pronunciation of the
  classical Chinese

10
(No Transcript)
11
The index database of U of Washington

• Hanguk Yoktae Munjip Chongso Name Index an
  index database created by University of
  Washington libraries
• http//db.lib.washington.edu/klcni/klcni.htm
• Searches can be conducted by author, book title,
  or keywords
• Author names and book titles appear in romanized
  forms (McCune-Reischauer), Korean words, and
  Chinese characters
• But ONLY the romanized forms are searchable

12
(No Transcript)
13
The index database of U of Washington (contd)
14
The Indexing Project - Aims

• Hanguk yoktae munjip chongso ????????is
  considered a treasure house of resources of
  cultural exchange history between Korea and China
  
• The project aims to make the treasurable
  resources well known to and be efficiently used
  by the communities.
• It would bridge between
• Chinese scholars and the Korean cultural and
  historical resources
• Todays readers and the ancient resources written
  in classical Chinese
• Modern generation of Korean and the Korean
  historical resources written in classical Chinese

15
The Indexing Project Aims (contd)

• Bridge between Chinese scholars and the Korean
  cultural and historical resources
• The large amount of information and rich content
  of the Hanguk yoktae munjip chongso presented
  to Chinese scholars how China was known to and
  remembered by Korean at the ancient time
• Some historical information about China were not
  recorded or only briefly recorded in the Chinese
  historical documents
• Valuable supplementary materials for scholars in
  studying Chinese history, culture, philosophy,
  and foreign relations from the perspective of
  foreigners
• Valuable for studying the Confucianism
  development in the East Asia region

16
The Indexing Project Aims (contd)

• Bridge between todays readers and the resources
  written in classical Chinese
• Many Chinese characters are known to have many
  variant written forms, some are not used in the
  modern days and some were actually invented by
  Korean scholars in the ancient time
• Todays readers may have difficulties in
  understanding and interpreting the content
  written in the classical style and in the
  classical Chinese
• One of the project outcomes would be a set of
  characters with their variant forms collected and
  edited so as to facilitate researchers to better
  retrieve the materials
• Sample difficult characters

v7, p288
v7, p56
17
The Indexing Project Aims (contd)

• Bridge between modern generation of Korean
  students and the Korean historical resources
  written in classical Chinese
• Since Hunmin jeongeum was invented and
  promulgated in 15th century, Chinese writing was
  eventually replaced. As the Munjip were written
  in classical Chinese, they are difficult for the
  modern generation of Korean students to use due
  to their limited knowledge in reading and
  understanding the classical Chinese writings
• The index would bridge between the modern
  generation of Korean students and their ancient
  culture and would assist them to easily
  understand their history and culture recorded in
  this collection because parallel data in Korean
  will be added in the indexing database
• For example
• ?????? ? ??????

18
The Indexing Project outcomes

• The data elements
• Author name and DoB/DoD (date of birth and/or
  date of death)
• Article title title of individual work (??),
  e.g. essay title, poem title
• Image of the individual article title
• Form of literature of the individual work
• Subject keywords
• Volume title
• Volume number
• Page number

19
The Indexing Project outcomes (contd)

• Data format
• Author names, titles, and forms of work will be
  provided in the following formats
• Original scripts, i.e. Chinese characters
• Pinyin romanization
• Korean words
• Korean romanization (McCune-Reischauer
  romanization)
• Subject keywords
• Will be assigned to bring out the key points of
  the content of the work
• The indexing database will be made searchable by
  all the aforementioned elements and in all the
  data formats
• It can also be published in print with specified
  data formats and elements when demanded

20
The Indexing Project outcomes (contd)

• The image below shows a poem in v.7

21
The Indexing Project outcomes (contd)

• The proposed sample index record for the poem

22
Collaboration of the Project

• As it would involve a lot of human resources and
  time, a collaborative model of the indexing
  project of the following items is proposed
• Project coordination
• Data analysis
• Documentation
• Scanning of titles (image of titles)
• Data inputting (original scripts)
• Data editing (Pinyin, Korean, McCune-Reischauer
  romanization)
• Data interpretation (variant characters,
  characters need to create)
• Content analysis assign subject keywords
• Proofreading
• Quality control
• Database design and maintenance

23
Tentative project workflow

• Database design, and data structure and fields
  design
• Output existing data (volume level) from library
  database
• Original script data inputting (article level
  title, form of work, page number)
• Title image scanning
• Manual translation of the classic Chinese to
  Korean words
• Machine translation of Pinyin and
  McCune-Reischauer romanization
• Proofreading
• Subject analysis and assigning of subject
  keywords data interpretation (difficult/rare/vari
  ant characters)
• Quality control
• Build up a set of variant Chinese characters
• Build up a set of Korean invented Chinese
  characters
• Contribute characters to the Unicode database if
  not yet exists

24
Potential collaborating libraries

• Hong Kong
• City University of Hong Kong, Run Run Shaw
  Library
• Taiwan
• Academia Sinica, Taiwan
• National Taiwan University, Library
• National Chung Hsing University, Library
• Libraries in Mainland China
• North American libraries

25

• The information in books are treasurable and
  meaningful only if they are well exposed to and
  used by people, otherwise, they are just symbols.
  
• Libraries should not only conserve human
  knowledge but also actively promote it to the
  communities.

26

• Thank You!

hsching_at_cityu.edu.hk lbceline_at_cityu.edu.hk