[KS] Library of Congress Korean Controversy
Hana Kim
hn.kim at utoronto.ca
Thu Jul 17 13:13:54 EDT 2008
Dear Koreanists:
As you may have heard, the Tok Island issue has recently spread its
controversy all the way to the United States Library of Congress and all
of our North American university libraries.
As the Chair of the Committee on Korean Materials under the auspices of
the Council on East Asian Libraries of the Association for Asian
Studies, I head an organization of Korean Studies librarians in North
America.
Recently, we were shocked to learn that the U.S. Library of Congress had
arbitrarily planned to officially change the existing subject heading of
“Tok Island (Korea)” to the new heading of “Liancourt Rocks.”
Furthermore, within this new subject heading the existing broader
explanation of “Islands Korea (South)” would be changed to “Islands of
the Sea of Japan.” A closed Library of Congress meeting to ratify this
decision was planned for July 16.
Since this plan was not widely known, our organization took it upon
ourselves to voice a strong protest to this sudden change, and also made
the relevant South Korean governmental bodies aware of this situation.
Thanks to the efforts of many parties, I am pleased to report that the
Library of Congress has now officially postponed any decision on this
matter until there is further international resolution of this issue.
As Koreanists, I felt that you should be made aware of this matter, and
I hope that you will actively make your own views on this matter known
to the relevant parties. In addition, I feel that this matter also
requires the further study and deliberation of experts such as
yourselves. I hope that we may see much scholarly activity to elucidate
this delicate issue.
Should you require any more detailed information, I would be happy to
share it with you.
Sincerely,
Hana Kim
Chair, Committee on Korean Materials
--
***************************************************************
Hana Kim, Korea Studies Librarian
Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library
University of Toronto Libraries
130 St. George Street, 8th Floor, Room 8049
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5S 1A5
Tel. (416) 978 1570 (7th Fl.) / 978 3805 (8th Fl.)
Fax. (416) 978 0863
Email: hn.kim at utoronto.ca
Web: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/east/
***************************************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://koreanstudies.com/pipermail/koreanstudies_koreanstudies.com/attachments/20080717/6d82efbc/attachment.html>
More information about the Koreanstudies
mailing list