Mapping Asia is an RSLP-funded project to provide support for research on Asia, the Middle East and North Africa by disclosing information about the existence and availability of resources housed in university, public or specialised libraries in the UK. The information is available in a searchable database on the Web.
The Mapping Asia project consists of three sub-projects, the aims of which are:
A preliminary survey of over 200 UK libraries, including public and special libraries, was conducted to locate significant Asian Studies collections and verify the contact details of prospective contributing institutions. As a result, the main survey was developed and launched in January 2001. In September 2001, new improved entry forms were developed and the scope of the project was extended to allow partners and contributing institutions to access their records via a password for future editing.
Approximately 90 libraries are expected to add and edit collection description records before the end of the project.
The data is stored in a database tailored to the specific needs of the project. Project staff have created a retrieval interface offering a basic search facility and a browse function for selected fields. An advanced search facility is under development.
The compilation of a database of newspaper holdings is underway, which will be searchable alongside the collection descriptions. The database stores mainly newspaper bibliographic records in MARC format which have been made available to the project via an agreement with the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago (CRL). For titles not available in MARC format, minimum level catalogue entries are created to be replaced by proper MARC records during the course of the project. The holding information collected from partner libraries is entered in textual format depending on the information available. Partner libraries will be given password access to edit the holding information at any time and create up-to-date handlists for their own purposes. An export function for newspaper MARC records is also being designed.
The purpose of the survey of linguistic expertise is to provide information about Asian language expertise among UK libraries complementing and extending the CURL survey carried out in March 2001. As a result of the lack of suitable standards to define language competence in libraries, it was decided to go beyond spoken proficiency to include an indication of knowledge in dealing with various scripts and formats. A number of core Asian languages was identified and a list of libraries compiled. The survey covers academic and selected public libraries not covered by CURL. Results are expected in May/June 2002.
The following libraries are partners in the project:
University of Birmingham
The British Library
British Library of Development Studies
British Library of Political and Economic Science
University of Cambridge
University of Durham
University of Edinburgh
University of Exeter
University of Glasgow
University of Hull
University of Kent at Canterbury
University of Leeds
University of Manchester
University of Oxford (lead institution)
University of Sheffield
SOAS
Wellcome Institute Library
Tel:01865 277033
Fax: 01865 277029
E-mail: lef@bodley.ox.ac.uk
Content: Gill Davenport
Last updated 2 July 2002