CALA names three winners to receive Sally C. Tseng Grants

Contact: Satia Orange


Director, OLOS


312-280-4295


sorange@ala.org
For Immediate Release


June 10, 2005

CALA names three winners to receive Sally C. Tseng Grants

CHICAGO – The Chinese American Library Association (CALA), an affiliate of the American Library Association (ALA), is pleased to announce it has selected three recipients to receive Sally C. Tseng Grants. The $1000 grant, donated by Sally C. Tseng, CALA executive director, provides support to CALA members in activities related to research in library and information science.

The recipients are:

Jian Anna Xiong and Liang Ruan (joint proposal)

Lian Ruan is a CALA member and head librarian of Illinois Fire Service Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Jian Anna Xiong is CALA's membership committee chair and government information librarian at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. The grant will help Ruan and Xiong embark on a joint research project entitled “In Search of Excellence: Chinese American Librarians in the 21st Century.”

The project, which consists of a survey to CALA's current members and a study of the status and characteristics of Chinese American librarians in the United States, will provide both quantitative and qualitative data analysis to communicate and promote Chinese American librarianship. It will provide a picture of the ability of Chinese American librarians and their responses to information requests in their organizations. The study findings can be used as a tangible example to help promote Chinese American librarianship and the LIS profession.

It will also address the increasing need to understand Chinese American librarians as one of the largest ethnic librarian groups in American library communities and renew interest to demonstrate and prove their critical roles in the library and information science profession. The research result will help Chinese students studying library and information science as well as Chinese librarians to better fit into American libraries. It will help them expand their job choices, embrace a higher and broader vision in working as minority librarians in America, and enhance the integration of Chinese librarians into American library society, as well as add diversity to the society.

Yongyi Song

Yongyi Song is technical services and collection development librarian at the John F. Kennedy Library of California State University Los Angeles and serves on CALA California Chapter's executive board. He has published many books and articles on the Chinese Cultural Revolution and received a number of national awards including the prestigious 21st Century Librarian Award from the School of Library and Information Science of University of Syracuse.

The grant will help Song in two of his research projects: 1) a panel presentation entitled “Preserving Chinese History: Digital Resources on China Studies Overseas at the Third International Conference of Institutes & Libraries for Chinese Overseas Studies” for which he serves as chair and 2) the final editing work of an updated version of The Chinese Cultural, Revolution Database, CD-ROMs, for which he serves as a chief editor.

The upgrade of the Chinese Cultural Revolution Database will significantly enhance the database with new sources and technology and will provide much more valuable data for historians, scholars, and researchers to study this important historical event in the 20th century.

The grants will be presented to the recipients on Sunday, June 26, 2005, 7 -10 pm, at the CALA Awards Banquet in Chicago during the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference at Chinatown-Three Happiness Restaurant. The restaurant is located at 2130 S. Wentworth Ave., Chicago, IL 60616.

This year's Sally C. Tseng's Professional Development Grant Committee included:

  • Manuel Urrizola, head of Monograph & Serials Cataloging, University of California Irvine, co-chair; Ying Xu, humanities librarian, California State University Los Angeles, co-chair;

  • Wenwen Zhang, director, San Gabriel Public Library, San Gabriel, Calif.

CALA’s mission is to promote better communication among Chinese American librarians; to serve as a forum for the discussion of mutual problems and professional concerns among Chinese American librarians; and to promote the development of Chinese and American librarianship.