THE HANNOM HERITAGE IN VIETNAM, ITS IMPACT TO SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

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THE HAN-NOM HERITAGE IN VIETNAM, ITS IMPACT TO
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

• Chu Tuyet Lan
• Library Director
• The Institute of Han-Nom Studies
• Mahasarakham, September 11th-12th, 2008

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CONTENTS

• I/ The Institute of Han-Nom Studies Its
  function and collection
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Function
• 3. Collection
• II/ How to Widely Provide Han-Nom Knowledge to
  the Research Community
• III/ Experiences in creating Han-Nom e-library
  at the Institute of Han-Nom Studies
• Digitization of Han-Nom books
• Digitization of paper rubbings of Han-Nom
  inscription
• Successfully creating full-text database of the
  Journal of Han-Nom and posted on the INTERNET
• Creating bibliographic database of old materials
  on Hanoi the Capital of Vietnam
• Conclusion

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I/ The Institute of Han-Nom StudiesIts function
and collection

• IHNS is the largest center in Vietnam devoted to
  decoding the Hán Nôm heritage.
• It performs multiple functions of collecting,
  preserving, restoring, translating, researching
  and publishing the Hán Nôm heritage of Vietnam.
• It also trains Hán Nôm researchers, organizes
  seminars on Hán Nôm research, and engages in
  various exchanges and cooperative activities with
  institutions of foreign countries.

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Information Resources

• 20,000 books (including Nôm books of the Dao,
  Tày, and other ethnic groups in Vietnam).

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Information Resources

• More than 54,000 paper rubbings from stone
  steles, bronze bells, stone gongs and wood
  plaques (including stele inscriptions left by the
  Cham ethnic group) dating from the Lý Dynasty
  (11th Century) to the Nguy?n Dynasty (20th
  Century).

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Information Resources

• In addition, the Institute holds more than
  20,000 units of wood block printing and 25,000
  reference books in Vietnamese, Chinese and other
  languages.

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II/ How to Widely Provide Han-Nom Knowledge to
the Research Community

• Han-Nom collection is the most important resource
  for those who wants to study Vietnamese country
  and Vietnamese people in the past, because it is
  the original source ( the Han-Nom heritage).
• To meet the above requirement, we need to create
  a future international Vietnamese/Han-Nom
  e-library with concerned institutions and
  individuals to share e-research materials
  worldwide and to promote Vietnamese/ Han-Nom
  scholarship in pre-modern Vietnamese studies.
• This would be in response to the growing interest
  in research and teaching in Han Nom studies and
  the lack of convenient electronic access to the
  significant Han Nom resources that are scattered
  in the national libraries, research institutes,
  museums, archives, and personal libraries in
  Vietnam and in other countries.

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• To bring traditional knowledge to the modern
  society, the Institute of Han-Nom Studies has
  organized a lot of training courses to equip
  researchers the needed knowledge to decode the
  indigenous materials in our collection. Their
  value will help young people nowadays to learn
  and keep up the old generation in order to
  develop the society and its economy.
• The best way to provide knowledge to the
  researchers and young generation is to create
  digital library.

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• THE E-LIBRARY WILL HAVE THE FOLLOWING FEATURES
• Contain all recorded knowledge online
  Distributed, maintained globally Accessible
  by Act
  as the information resource
• any person
• in any language
• at any time
• at any where on earth
• via the Internet

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EXPERIENCES IN CREATING THE HAN NOM E-LIBRARY AT
THE INSTITUTE OF HÁN-NÔM STUDIES

• Digitization of the Han-Nom books A single
  database of digital images was created right from
  the early 1998 for the most valuable and heavy
  used Han-Nom materials with the resolution of
  about 300 DPI, 24 bit color deep, JPG format.
• An integrated database has been created since
  2004 up to now (using SQL server 2000), linking
  both the digital images with the bibliographic
  information and the Vietnamese translation that
  can be searched via authors, titles and keywords,
  ...
• Until now, all Nom collection, Genealogy and the
  most precious historical works are digitized.

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DIGITIZATION OF PAPER RUBBING OF HAN-NOM
INSCRIPTION

• Depending on the basis of today's knowledge and
  the current situation, we use the digital camera
  (NIKON Cool Pix 5.000) together with some other
  equipments to photo all our rubbings with the
  funding from E.F.E.O (France).
• This is an international cooperative project
  between Vietnam and France, so far we already
  published 10 volumes of the stele inscription and
  plan 44 volumes more in the coming years.

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CREATING FULL-TEXT ELECTRONIC JOURNAL DELIVERY
OF HAN-NOM REVIEW ON THE INTERNET

• Tap Chi Han Nom (Han Nom Review) is an important
  bimonthly scholarly journal of Han Nom studies in
  Vietnamese with Chinese and English translations
  of the table of contents. The contents of the
  journal have been greatly enhanced over the years
  ranging from scholarly articles, book reviews,
  exchange of opinions to selected Han Nom works
  for research reference and news update.
  http//www.hannom.org.vn/
• So far, we are doing word processing the entire
  run of the full-text journal and the ongoing
  issues of the Han Nom Review to provide
  electronic access to users all over the world.
  The database of Han Nom Review includes a
  searchable index by author, title and keywords.

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Create Han-Nom E-Library

• For a long term strategic plan, the Institute of
  Han-Nom Studies needs to create the research
  library/the Han-Nom e-library that would benefit
  all participating parties as well as the general
  public.
• First and foremost we need to do surveys in all
  libraries/institutions that have Han-Nom
  resources to build an on-line union catalog by
  the method of central catalogs as well as to form
  a library consortium.

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On Creating Library Consortium
1. Modern information

3. On line
2. Direct delivery
4. To the users
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The functions of Han-Nom e-library
1. Provide an on-line union catalog of all
Han-Nom resources, update and maintain
bibliographic access of all users worldwide

• Serve as a Vietnamese/Han-Nom Studies
  Clearinghouse on a continual basis

2. Update and maintain bibliographic access to
the ongoing expanded union catalogs of Han-Nom
collection
3. Continued maintaining an Internet-based
infrastructure for full-text electronic journal
delivery of Tap chi Han Nom
4. Provide pedagogical resources for online
interactive teaching and learning needs.
5. Doing digitization of the full-text
dissertations on the field of Social Sciences and
Humanities of all the institutions of VASS
6. Creating bibliographic database connecting the
digitized data above
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Quality will be instead of Quantity

• Recently, we try to apply information technology
  to all library activities, reference services can
  be implemented via email and telephone during the
  working hours of the week.
• The acquisition of information will not be much
  problem in the future quality instead of
  quantity will be the focus more than ever before.

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Book Museums Only

• We hope when the sources of knowledge are
  completely represented in digital form, physical
  libraries could certainly continue to exist, but
  with advancing digitization, their function is
  not as important as nowadays, and they would be
  seen as an archive of printed collections or as
  book museums only.

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8. Conclusion

• In the trend of globalization, Vietnam needs to
  integrate to the world in the Library-Information-
  Science, library would serve as a motive force
  for the construction of the nation marked by a
  rich population, a strong country, an equitable,
  democratic and civilized society.
• Have in hands the most precious indigenous
  material of Vietnam, the Institute of Han-Nom
  Studies has been doing research on specialized
  theoretical issues, editing reference volumes as
  well as introducing major authors and works in
  order to meet the demand of socialization of
  Han-Nom knowledge, serving the construction of
  advanced Vietnamese culture imbued national
  identity.

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THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION WWW.
HANNOM.ORG.VNLanhannom_at_yahoo.com