bridge to a treasure house: a collaborative business model for indexing the korean classics...

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

Classics “Hanguk Yoktae Munjip Chongso”《韓國歷代文集叢書》

Prof Hsianghoo CHING ( 景祥祜 )

Celine CHEUNG ( 張曉寧 )

Run Run Shaw Library, City University of Hong Kong

March 26, 2009 – CEAL/CKM Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Library, City University of Hong Kong

Background

• Acquisition of Han’guk yǒktae munjip ch‘ongsǒ 《韓國歷代文集叢書》 (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 university’s general education curriculum

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Background (cont’d)

• Han’guk yǒktae munjip ch‘ongsǒ 《韓國歷代文集叢書》(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

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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.

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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

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http://lib.cityu.edu.hk/

Library, City University of Hong Kong 6


Existing reference tools

• Two sets of reference materials published by Kyŏngin Munhwasa ( 韓國景仁文化社 ), both compiled by Kim Sŏng-hwan ( 金成煥 ):1. Han’guk yŏktae munjip ch‘ongsŏ mongnok 《韓國歷代

文集叢書目錄》2. Han’guk yŏktae munjip ch‘ongsŏ mongnok saegin 《韓

國歷代文集叢書目錄索引》

• 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

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Existing reference tools (cont’d)

• Han’guk yŏktae munjip ch‘ongsŏ mongnok 《韓國歷代文集叢書目錄》

- Summarized the content by listing the formats of the works

Summary of content of v.7-10

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Existing reference tools (cont’d)

• Han’guk yŏktae munjip ch‘ongsŏ mongnok saegin 《韓國歷代文集叢書目錄索引》• 3 vols

– v.1. author name index arranged by period ( 著者時代別索引 )

– v.2. book title index arranged by Korean alphabets ( 著者姓名別索引 )

– v.3. author name index arranged by Korean alphabets ( 文集書名別索引 )

• Limited its usage to only the readers with knowledge of the Korean pronunciation of the classical Chinese

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The index database of U of Washington

• Hanguk Yoktae Munjip Chongso Name Index – an index database created by University of Washington librarieshttp://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

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http://db.lib.washington.edu/klcni/klcni.htm

Library, City University of Hong Kong 12


The index database of U of Washington (cont’d)

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The Indexing Project - Aims

• Han’guk yŏktae munjip ch‘ongsŏ 《韓國歷代文集叢書》 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

– Today’s readers and the ancient resources written in classical Chinese

– Modern generation of Korean and the Korean historical resources written in classical Chinese

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The Indexing Project – Aims (cont’d)

• Bridge between Chinese scholars and the Korean cultural and historical resources

– The large amount of information and rich content of the Han’guk yŏktae munjip ch‘ongsŏ 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

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• Bridge between today’s 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

– Today’s 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, p56 v7, p288

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• 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:

醉書示文長老 취서시문장노

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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 (篇名 ), 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

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The Indexing Project outcomes (cont’d)

• 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

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• The image below shows a poem in v.7:

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• The proposed sample index record for the poem:

Field Author Author’s DoB/DoD

ArticleTitle

Article Title image

Form of work

Subjectkeywords

Volume title Volumenumber

Page number

Data 李奎報

Li, Kuibao

이규보

Yi, Kyu-bo

1168-1241.

醉書示文長老

Zui shu shi Wen zhang lao

취서시문장노

Chwiso si Mun changno

古律詩東國李相國集

Dong guo Li Xiangguo ji

동국이상국집

Tongguk Yi Sang-guk Jip

7 105

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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

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Tentative project workflow1. Database design, and data structure and fields design

2. Output existing data (volume level) from library database

3. Original script data inputting (article level title, form of work, page number)

4. Title image scanning

5. Manual translation of the classic Chinese to Korean words

6. Machine translation of Pinyin and McCune-Reischauer romanization

7. Proofreading

8. Subject analysis and assigning of subject keywords; data interpretation (difficult/rare/variant characters)

9. Quality control

10. Build up a set of variant Chinese characters

11. Build up a set of Korean invented Chinese characters

12. Contribute characters to the Unicode database if not yet exists

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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

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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.

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Thank You!

[email protected]

[email protected]

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mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

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