Confirmation of the Minutes of the 6th Meeting (in Brisbane 1995)
CDNLAO Website
Digitization of the CDNLAO Newsletter
Country reports

The 7th Meeting of the Conference of Directors of National Libraries in Asia and Oceania (CDNLAO) was held in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea on 21 November 1998. This was a one-day meeting like the previous one, and the eight participants (including one interpreter from China) from seven countries, Australia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Papua New Guinea as a host nation were fewer than before.  From the National Diet Library of Japan, the author of this article attended as a proxy for Mr. Masao Tobari, the National Diet Librarian. The other participants were: 

Mr. Cliff Law (Director, National Initiatives & Collaboration Branch, National Library of Australia) 
Mr. Zhang Yanbo (Deputy Director, National Library of China) 
Mr. Cheng Zhen (Director, Information Center, National Library of China) 
Mr. Hernando (Director, National Library of Indonesia) 
Ms. Zawiyah Bte Baba (Director, Support Services, National Library of Malaysia) 
Mr. Daniel Paraide (Director, National Library Services, Papua New Guinea) 
Mr. R Ramachandran (Director, National Library of Singapore) 

Confirmation of the Minutes of the 6th Meeting (in Brisbane 1995)

Australia made the following proposal about Resolution 2 of the 6th Meeting: 
That Australia establish a sub-committee comprising the chief executive officers of the national libraries of Australia, Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia and Japan. This sub-committee, the secretariat of which will be at the National Library of Australia, would circulate proposals for interim action on mutually agreed specific issues such as copyright, the information super highway, legal deposit legislation, and national library governing board. 

Australia proposed to hold the sub-committee which consists of all member countries present at CDNLAO 7 (Australia, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Japan, China, Indonesia and Singapore) to discuss common themes especially library cooperation, because a sub-committee has not been established yet since the last meeting. The proposal was approved and the sub-committee was added to sessions schedule of that afternoon. 

Seven participating countries exchanged information about bilateral and domestic library cooperation cases under way. It was agreed to provide information through the CDNLAO Web site, and to improve partnership and cooperative activities in the area. 

CDNLAO Website

The CDNLAO Website (test version: http://www.nla.gov.au/cdnlao/), developed by the National Library of Australia, was presented and demonstrated, and approved by the participants. The development of the website was proposed by Mr. Warren Horton, Director-General of the NLA. The new website is modeled on Gabriel, the website of CENL (Conference of Directors of European National Libraries). Gabriel (http://www.ddb.de/gabriel/) provides information on functions, services and publications of national libraries in the region, and links to web sites of member libraries. 

Mr. Horton requested in his letter of Dec. 21,1998 up-to-date information about legislation (National Library Acts), buildings (with pictures), administration, collections and services from each library for the new site due to start officially in March 1999. The Coordination Support Branch (former National Initiatives & Collaboration Branch) of the National Library of Australia will host the site. 

At this time, the CDNLAO Website consists of outlines of 28 national libraries in the Asia-Oceania region, projects in the region and related information. Although quality of the information infrastructure varies among CDNLAO member libraries, I expect that this site will become a place for information exchange and dissemination not only for libraries in Asia-Oceania but for libraries all over the world in the near future. 

Digitization of the CDNLAO Newsletter

The CDNLAO Newsletter is edited and distributed by the National Diet Library of Japan on behalf of the member libraries. I reported that the NDL has reviewed the basic principles of its publications and has decided to digitize the CDNLAO Newsletter and to make it available on the NDL Homepage (http://www.ndl.go.jp/e/publications/cdnlao/) from FY1998. Yet, we could not decide whether it is appropriate or not to stop publishing it in paper form without approval in the CDNLAO meeting. We decided to publish in paper as well until the end of FY1998. I brought copies of no. 33, which had just been published, to distribute at the Meeting. 

Though the NDL's proposal to digitize the Newsletter was agreed, many representatives requested that the Newsletter be kept in paper form until the next CDNLAO Meeting considering the information environment of the region. This request was included in the Resolutions of the 7th Conference. 

Country reports

For reasons of schedule, time for country reports was cut down. Representatives from four countries, China, Japan, Indonesia and Malaysia gave addresses along with the papers submitted in advance, while the representatives from Australia and Papua New Guinea did not prepare papers and reported briefly on the present situation and the future plans of their libraries. 

The NDL submitted the paper "National Diet Library of Japan: its library services in the 21st century". The NDL celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1998. Inheriting a great accumulation and tradition from past, it aims at improvement of new international and domestic library services. I reported on three core projects among others, the Kansai-kan (tentative name) of the National Diet Library, the International Library of Children's Literature and the Digital Library project. At the previous meeting the Japanese representative reported on the Kansai-kan and the Digital Library project, but the report on the International Library of Children's Literature was new. My report particularly aroused the interest of observers from public libraries in Papua New Guinea. 

The country report of Singapore was read in the Conference of the Papua New Guinea Library Association held from November 23. Thailand and Vietnam did not attend the Meeting, and submitted only papers. 

At the end of the Meeting, the Director of the National Library of Singapore announced that next 8th Meeting would be held in Singapore in conjunction with the CONSAL Meeting in 2000. 

I received the impression that the CDNLAO Meeting was regarded as a part of the Conference of the Papua New Guinea Library Association. The Conference took place after an interval of ten years and was prepared by the whole nation. It was held for three days from November 23 under the theme "Libraries for Nation - Building". Many papers were read and discussion was lively. Participants of the CDNLAO Meeting then attended this PNGLA Conference. 
 

Sakae Edamatsu 
Director 
Institute of Library and Information Science 
National Diet Library of Japan