Harvard East Asian conference focuses on collaboration

Harvard-Yenching Librarian James Cheng brought together his colleagues from Ivy League and non-Ivy League schools to discuss how East Asian research libraries can better collaborate to ensure their valuable collections are accessible for scholarly research.

“Harvard cannot do it all alone,” said Cheng. “Collaboration is a timely topic for us all, and while we are all here, we can use this opportunity to talk about acquisitions, consortiums, technical services and the future of East Asian libraries.”

Librarians from Cornell, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Yale, Dartmouth, Penn, the University of Chicago, and from far as away as China joined their Harvard counterparts on Dec. 6 and 7 in the Lamont Forum Room for a two-day conference to discuss the challenges they face, and possible solutions.

In the past, libraries had focused on building collections to be used locally, but advances in technology have led to changes in access and research.