[KS] From Brother Anthony

[Frank Joseph Shulman]

Dear Brother Anthony, Frank and other KS list members,

In at least one respect, however, the situation appears to be far better for researchers in Europe and could definitely be improved for Korean scholars in Korea.  Many faculty and students in Europe (as well as in North America, Australia and New Zealand) have ready access through their institutions to the online "Bibliography of Asian Studies" (BAS) of the Association for Asian Studies (http://www.asian-studies.org/bassub.htm)—among the 825,000 bibliographical citations within it dating from 1971-2013 are an estimated 40,000 or more entries that deal in some way with Korea—whereas the Northeast Asian History Foundation in Seoul and Seoul National University are the only Korean institutions that currently subscribe to the BAS.  By contrast, I might add, there are six institutional subscribers in Hong Kong, nine in Japan, five in Singapore, and four in Taiwan, as well as two each in Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands, four in France, twenty in Germany, three each in Italy and Switzerland, one each in Austria, Norway and Sweden, and twelve in the United Kingdom.

Best wishes,

Frank

June 19, 2013

Frank Joseph Shulman
Associate Editor, Bibliography of Asia Studies of the Association for Asian Studies
Bibliographer, Editor and Consultant for Reference Publications in Asian Studies
9225 Limestone Place
College Park, Maryland 20740-3943 (U.S.A.)
E-mail: fshulman at umd.edu
________________________________________
From: Koreanstudies [koreanstudies-bounces at koreaweb.ws] on behalf of Frank Hoffmann [hoffmann at koreaweb.ws]
Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2013 3:07 AM
To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
Subject: Re: [KS] From Brother Anthony

Two thoughts and comments about two of Brother Anthony's notes below:

(2) At least half of the subscribers to this list may be in the same
situation Brother Anthony describes. Although, I think if you are in
Korea and associated with a larger university there, then that
description does not even fully apply, because leading universities
there, same as in the U.S., subscribe to all the major online
bibliographic and full-text services, and students and faculty do
have access to that as long as they are logged into their university
campus network. In many ways the situation at Korean institutions is
actually better than anywhere else, as these universities subscribe to
U.S. *and* Korea services. Those on the dark site of the moon are
actually the institutions in Europe, with the exception of some private
universities (but most universities in most European countries are
public institutions).
What would be really really really nice would be if AKSE or any other
group or institution would be able to work out some sort of access to
major U.S. and Korean bibliography and full-text networks--maybe on a
paid subscription basis, if pricing is not too outrageous.

Related to above, but coming to one of the other points Brother Anthony
made:
"An actively updated open-access online bibliography of Korea-related
publications": that, I would suggest, is by now not anymore all too
useful and is not really necessary. *Annotated* bibliographies are
certainly still useful, especially when looking over the rim of our own
coffee cup from time to time. But bibliographies as such … haven't
they been replaced nicely by those extensive online full-text and
traditional bibliographic-only and library catalog services? You can
easily create your very own, always up-to-date, bibliography on any
given topic by just doing some low-level user programming of EndNote or
similar programs, as long as you are one of those privileged ones
having access to above mentioned sources. But even that is really a
pretty outdated concept nowadays--to "import" work relevant
bibliographic information and entire texts to your own computer. Both,
publications and information about publications (bibliographies), as
well as access (reading) is done more and more remotely, without ever
importing anything. I do not think that in five years any student will
still have any texts on their own computer, not even their own ones. I
therefore suggest, as I and others did several years ago already, that
AKSE (can't think of a better organization for that) would look into
ways to provide access to bibliographic and full-text sources. Would
that not be one of the most logical tasks to do if it comes to
research?


Best,
Frank Hoffmann


On Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:46:18 +0900 (KST), Brother Anthony wrote:
> Three things:
> 1. I think members of this list should read the interview by James
> Blake Wiener of the Ancient History Encyclopedia with Dr. Mark
> Byington, Founder and Project Director of the Early Korea Project at
> the Korea Institute, Harvard University; it is very interesting
> http://www.ancient.eu.com/news/3755/    In this connection, I would
> be glad to hear privately from any who use Vimeo regarding its
> advantages and possible limitations as a platform for our RAS lecture
> videos.
>
> 2. We who live in Korea would like to encourage members to post on
> the List indications of significant recent publications in the field
> of Korean Studies. Scholars are often shy about advertizing their own
> publications, which is why their admirers should do it for them.  How
> else are we going to find out about them? This was prompted by
> surprise at a mention of Henry H. Em's recent publication The Great
> Enterprise: Sovereignty and Historiography in Modern Korea at Duke
> UP. I do not recall seeing anything about it on this list? And there
> are many others. Retired amateurs (of which I am one) do not have
> easy access to scholarly journals carrying reviews.
>
> More broadly, is there an actively updated open-access online
> bibliography of Korea-related publications? In particular, various
> museums from time to time publish sumptuous volumes as catalogues for
> special exhibitions. There are significant distribution problems
> concerning them and we are not clear whether anyone in Korea or
> elsewhere is listing or stocking such publications so that
> institutional libraries, at least, can obtain them.
>
> 3. The Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch is beginning to construct
> an e-book library, using some of my own materials, and including
> access to the Martin Uden collection. See
> http://www.raskb.com/content/welcome-ras-korea-e-book-library
>
> Brother Anthony
> President, RAS Korea
>
>

--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws