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No. 56, July 2006

The 14th CDNLAO meeting was held in Richmonde Hotel, Manila, Philippines on March 26, 2006 from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. The meeting was chaired by Prudenciana C. Cruz, Director, National Library of the Philippines.  It was scheduled in parallel with the 13th Congress of Southeast Asian Librarians (CONSAL XIII) from March 27 - 30, 2006.  A total of 14 national libraries were represented at the 14th CDNLAO Meeting, the eight ASEAN countries, plus Australia, China, Japan, Maldives, Sri Lanka and New Zealand.

The half-day meeting included progress, activities and project updates of each of the country under limited time due to the tight schedule. Several countries reported on the developments, on-line services, while others highlighted on-going developments including digitization, preservation and conservation.

In addition to the country reports, the meeting also discussed on the assistance to the Indian Ocean tsunami affected libraries. The participants were also able to witness the presentations about the state-of-the-art building of the National Library Board of Singapore, Tunis 2005 WSIS Summit, WLIC 2006 Korea and the Philippine eLibrary.

Australia featured the successful Libraries Australia Service which was formally launched in February 2006, the Transtesmin interlending service, the picture Australia service, the music Australia, and the national plan of Australia newspapers (NPLAN).

Cambodia achieved major milestone in the implementation of its ISBN system and setting up a Lending Collection.  The lending collection was launched to the public in July 2005

China's key projects include national digital library project and the Chinese rare books production project. In addition, its government is drafting the regulation on the protection of the right of communication through information at work. This regulation was formulated in accordance with the copyright law for the purpose of protecting the right of communication through information at work and of the copyright owners and encouraging the communication to public of excellent works.

In Indonesia, while coping with the catastrophic tsunami, unveiled a reading ambassador in December 2005. On the same year, it also distributed mobile libraries to provinces and districts in Indonesia. There were seventeen mobile libraries distributed to libraries all over Indonesia.

In Japan, its Prange Collection is held by the UM Library and covers the publications issued in Japan during the immediate post-World War II years (1945-1949) under the Allied Powers' occupation. As the IFLA/PAC Regional Centre for Asia, it continues to work to promote awareness of the importance of cooperative activities in preservation.

Korea established the National Library for Children and Young Adults, with a tentative opening scheduled on the first half of 2006. It will be housed in a four-storey building with two basement levels occupying a total floor space of 8,050 square meters. It has completed 80% of the construction process. It also held a ceremony on December 2005 to lay the foundation stone for the National Digital Library (NDL) and will be finished in 2008. It also implemented a new project named Asian Culture partnership to encourage cooperation among Asian countries.

The delegates of the 14th Conference of Directors of National Libraries in Asia and Oceania

Sri Lanka started the digitization program for its library collections in September 2005. Under the program, the NLDC has appointed a committee to formulate a policy for the digitization project.

Malaysia managed to build 200 rural libraries in 2005 and shall again be given budget for the development of 335 new rural libraries this year.  A national Union Catalog has also been set up in 2005, of which 23 libraries will be participating in the project. The equipment and software for this purpose have been purchased in the same year.

New Zealand launched the New Zealand digital content strategy collaborating with the 14 other government agencies for the project. New Zealand children were also helped using the 16,000 ejournals to help one critically think and evaluate the information in an online environment.

In Singapore, the new library building was opened in November 2005.  In the same year, it also launched the Celebrating Libraries Project.  It also formed a large number of reading clubs among desperate groups of people such as taxi drivers, hairdressers among others as part of its 2010 strategic plan. 

Thailand organized the virtual client training in cooperation with ISSN in the national center in February 2005. The construction of its new building will be finished in six (6) months. It also hosted a workshop on preservation and conservation of library and information material to ASEAN countries.

Vietnam had also started its digital library project. Its adoption of the intellectual property law will come into effect on July 1, 2006.  It has also completed the national project "Building the National Electronic/Digital Library in the National Library of Vietnam" which started in 2001.

Philippines launched its Philippine eLib Project in April 2005, with its website www.elib.gov.ph. The Project contains bibliographic databases, more than 22 million digitized pages of Philippine materials such as rare books, serials, government publications, maps, photographs and online databases of 29,000 full text journals.

The 72nd WLIC on 20-24 August 2006 in Seoul, Korea was also discussed. The venue has 12 multi functional floors and 50 conference rooms that it can accommodate 7,000 people at the same time.

Singapore is moving ahead with its new 16-storey library building opened to the public in November 2005. It is a flexible, functional and efficient building with integrated systems. During the opening, it offered 109 databases on subscription with 300,000 downloadable ebooks. It is a place for Knowledge, a center to kindle one's Imagination, and an institution to explore one's Possibility.

There was no resolution adopted during the meeting. The members approved the 2007 meeting of CDNLAO with Indonesia willing to host the event. A proposal by Mr. Sakamoto, National Diet Library of Japan that NDL is willing to host the 2008 meeting in consonance with its 60th Anniversary.  Vietnam proposed and the members agreed that it will host the CDNLAO meeting in 2009 vis-a-vis CONSAL XIV.