Plenary Sessions

The library is fundamental to scholarship and the transmission of knowledge. The digital revolution is transforming research, teaching, and scholarly communication. It has also been transforming the library, as ever larger parts of the collection become available in digital formats, and as researchers make new demands on digital resources. In this plenary leaders of national libraries in China, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea are invited to address their library’s strategies for dealing with the digital world. What do they see as the possibilities and challenges now and in the future? In asking the leaders to address these questions, we hope that all present will consider the value of the various models these libraries are creating from a comparative perspective. The business model for the many text databases, of books and journals, that have been created commercially is based on licensing to libraries, putting strains on library budgets. But at the same time, scholars and research centers have created many widely-used non-commercial databases, tools, and platforms. However, many of these cannot easily be sustained by their creators. What should be the library’s role relative to these assets created outside of the library? Finally, how can libraries take advantage of the low cost of scholarly communication in a digital environment to share metadata and content across national boundaries?

• Yang Jidong, Librarian of the Harvard-Yenching Library (Chair)
• Martha Whitehead,  Vice President for the Harvard Library and University Librarian and Roy E. Larsen Librarian of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
• Tseng Shu-hsien, Director General, National Central Library, Taiwan
• Liu Wei, Vice Director, Shanghai Library, China
• Bùi Thu Hằng, Director of the Library, University of the Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University-Ho Chi Minh
• Onuma Tahee, Assistant Director, Digital Information Planning Division, National Diet Library, Japan
• Kim Suejeong, Director of Digital Initiatives Division, National Library of Korea
• Lauran R. Hartley,  Director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program, Columbia University

Although digital technologies transcend language, their application is to specific languages and cultures. The purpose of this plenary is to discuss the past, present, and most importantly the future of the digital humanities and digital scholarship around the world, with a focus on East Asia, to map out our paths and questions forward. What and when were the first developments in a particular language or national environment? What new trends (e.g., keywords, methods, tools, and questions) are leading recent developments? Where are the areas of limitations and opportunities for new innovation? What research tools, methods, and avenues are particularly promising? What possibilities of collaboration–transnational, translingual and or/trans-platform–lie ahead of us?

• Si Nae Park, Harvard University (Chair)
• Hsiang Jieh, on Taiwan
• Nagasaki Kiyonori, on Japan
• Javier Cha, on Korea
• Hung Jen Jou, on Buddhist Studies
• Xu Yongming, on China
• Nguyen Thi Minh Trung, on Vietnam
• Paul Vierthaler, on Europe and North America

Scholars have long been creating databases, tools, and platforms to support teaching and research in a digital environment.  These efforts are already having an impact on how research is organized and institutionalized.  New Digital Humanities research centers are being established, both within existing research centers and as independent academic units. How should such centers define their responsibility and scope? How should they relate to the library? How should they choose which projects to support? How can they sustain successful projects over the long term? What models for funding a new and distinctive research enterprise can be developed?  What principles should guide a center in making decision about preserving digital projects even after their “shelf-life” is over?

• Michael Szonyi, Harvard University (Chair)
• Chen Hsiyuan, Academia Sinica, Center for Digital Culture
• Kitamoto Asanobu, ROIS-DS Center for Open Data in the Humanities/National Institute of Informatics, Japan
• Wang Jun, Peking University, Center for Digital Humanities
• Ryu Junbeom and Ha Myungjoon, National Institute of Korean History
• Ven. Huimin, Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts

National language dictionaries are open-ended projects, for languages change over time. In addition there may be many different kinds of specialist dictionaries. This plenary ask three questions that are occasioned by the digital revolution. First, has the proliferation of searchable, digital texts led to changes in the way new editions are created? Second, how are dictionaries taking into account language usage in new digital formats such as social media. Third, and perhaps most important: given that the written languages of East Asia have many common roots, will it be possible in a digital environment for dictionaries to go online and link to each other, so that users can better see how languages are related

• Ronald Egan, Stanford University (Chair)
• Nakagawa Natsuko, Center for Corpus Development of National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics
• Li Lifeng, Center for the Editing of the Great Dictionary of Chinese
• Lee Daeseong, National Institute of Korean Language
• Shimoda Masahiro, Center for Evolving Humanities, University of Tokyo