Ying Liu, Subject Librarian for Asian Studies, Linguistics, and Religious Studies, University of Victoria Libraries

Could we begin this interview by first introducing yourself, for example, your professional training and educational background? What did you study at the university? Do you come from a family of educators or librarians?

My name is Ying Liu, the subject librarian for Asian Studies, Linguistics, and Religious Studies at University of Victoria (UVic) in Canada. I was born in Shanghai, China and immigrated to Canada in 2001. I have an MA degree in Applied Linguistics (2001) from Shanghai Maritime University and a MLIS degree (2004) from McGill University. I come from a family of engineers, my grandfather Zhicheng Liu was the chief engineer who led the project of using upper-stream water from the Yangzi River as the source of tap water for Shanghai. My parents were petroleum engineers.

Are you a second-career librarian?

Yes, I did my undergraduate degree in Business at the Nanjing Aeronautic and Astronautic University. However, I was not very interested in business and at that time students could not reclaim their majors. I was much more intrigued by the English language, and I ended up spending most of my time in the library and reading as many English language books as I could find. Three years after my graduation, I applied to the graduate program in Applied Linguistics and passed the National Graduate Entrance Examination. I became a college teacher and was married later after receiving my MA degree. My husband and I immigrated to Canada in 2001. I entered the graduate program of Education at Concordia University and dropped out because I felt that I was more interested in practical teaching than getting a PhD degree.

I spent almost one year doing research and reapplying for the MLIS program at McGill University. Frankly, I had not known too much about the library systems in North America at the time, but I loved libraries and books. The more I got involved in the program, the more I knew that I had made the right decision. Very soon, I shifted my focus to becoming an academic librarian.

Could you describe your career path to becoming the subject librarian for Asian Studies, Linguistics, and Religious Studies at the UVic?

After receiving my MLIS degree and job hunting for a certain time, I had to make a decision between two offers. One was the position of a school librarian in Montreal and the other was a three-year contract position at the University of Regina. I chose the latter offer due to my passion for academic libraries. At the University of Regina library, I mainly worked as a collection development librarian and became the liaison with the department of International Languages and Literatures. The liaison experience made me realize that I enjoyed working with faculty, students, and other library users. When I saw the position of Asian Studies librarian at UVic posted, I applied and was accepted into the position.

In 2008, I started working as a subject librarian for Asian Studies at UVic. Due to my education background, I took care of the collection development, library instruction, I served as liaison for Linguistics, and later on, for the subject of Religious Studies.

Are you a member of professional associations? If so, which ones? Do you hold any elected position(s)? Do you attend professional events? What about your own and your staff’s continuing education?

I am a long-term member of the Council of East Asian Libraries, the Association of Asian Studies, the Library Association of British Columbia, and the Society of Chinese Studies Librarians. At present, I serve on the Committee for Professional Activities, Society of Chinese Studies Librarians, the Committee of Chinese Materials, Council on East Asian Libraries. I participated, presented, and volunteered on the local/regional/international professional conferences such as the British Columbia Library Association (BCLA) annual conference, the Vancouver Island Library Staff conference, the Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL) annual meeting, the Association of Asian Studies (AAS) conference, and other joint academic events with faculty members such as the Digital Humanities Summer Institute at UVic and the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences Canada.

The career of librarianship involves constant learning. On the one hand, as subject librarians, we learn about the trends and change of subject content everyday through working with faculty and students on various research topics and teaching tasks. On the other hand, library science and management change rapidly with the development of technologies, tools, new publication trends, and online user behaviors. Except for our personal professional network, our library is the institute member of many library associations/consortia such as Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), Center for Research Libraries (CRL), Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), etc. and other network of cultural or professional organizations/initiatives in the areas of Open Access, Open Education, Open Data, and digitization. The institute membership usually provides us lots of training opportunities for free or with discounts. We have the Library Staff Development and Respectful Workplace Advisory Group to coordinate the trainings for all library staff and at present I am the chair of the committee.

Could you describe your typical day at work? Is there ever a typical day at work?

Typically, I start with checking emails, especially the reference questions from library patrons. I always try to respond to emails the same day and, from time to time, I receive requests for face-to-face consultations and I will give them priority. As a reference librarian, I work on the library research help desk regularly and teach general and subject-specific library research sessions on campus. As the subject librarian for Linguistics, Asian Studies, and Religious Studies, I recommend, select, and de-select the print and online resources in the subject areas to ensure that the collections meet the needs of teaching and research. I also work on various committees within the library or on campus and participate in designing and reviewing services, programs, and other issues. Every day, I spend some time learning new things, be it a new resource provided by a vendor, or a research tool used in my subject area, a discussion from the Listservs that I usually monitor, or something I learnt by answering a difficult question. If I am working on a project, I usually block one or two days a week from regular meetings or work in order to concentrate on the project. This is why I love my job and I never get bored of it.

Could you describe the size of the Asian Studies Collection at the UVic and its collection highlights?

The UVic Libraries was established in 1963 with the McPherson Library being a key component of the William C. Mearns Centre for Learning. The Library holds over 2.1 million volumes and numerous digital content and has collected books about the Pacific and Asia since very early on. The collection of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages started in the 1970s when the Pacific and Asian Studies department was established. UVic Libraries hold over 9,000 volumes of Chinese language books, 7,500 volumes of Japanese language books, and 900 volumes of Korean language books. The books are mainly of subjects such as literature, history, philosophy, social sciences, and fine arts. Despite of our regular acquisition budget, development of the Asian language collection has benefited greatly from donations from UVic faculty members such as Dr Neil Burton and Dr Daniel Bryant, and from other donations from external institutes.

For Chinese language materials, in 1994, the library received a donation of $250,000 from the Dr Chen-Fu Koo Endowment Fund and the interest from the endowment will be used to purchase library materials (in all formats) pertaining to any aspect of Chinese or Taiwanese culture, literature or language which support the teaching and research needs of UVic faculty and students.

Our library has maintained close connection with Asian Libraries and foundations. I annually apply for and select academic publications donated by the Korean Foundation and the “Window of China” project, which greatly enrich our collection. We have separate interlibrary loan agreements with the National Diet Library of Japan, the National Central Library of Taiwan, and the Shanghai Library from Mainland China. Recently, our library participated in the Global Press Archive Digitization Initiative through which the East View and the Centre for Research Libraries worked together to digitize and expand the online access to world newspapers including many Asian language newspapers such as the Late Qing and Republican Era Chinese Newspapers (open access).

UVic is located at the east of Victoria, which used to be the first port city for Asian immigrants to reach North America by sea in the late nineteenth century. The Chinatown in Victoria used to be the largest in North America. The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association was initiated here and many important figures such as Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and Sun Yet-sen visited Victoria. The Archives and Special Collections of UVic Libraries hold rich archival material and other documents of early Chinese immigrants as well as their organizations and activities on the west coast of Canada. Part of these collections were digitized by our library and made openly accessible to researchers around the world. They can be found from the list of UVic Libraries’ Digital Collections.

Given the recent rise of Korea’s cultural economy and pop culture (e.g., the Korean film industry, K-pop, and Korean TV dramas) – have you witnessed any major changes or shift in focus in the research activities and scholarly publishing trends among the end-users?

Yes, I have noticed an increase of reference questions that need to be answered using Korean-language sources. I have also noticed that more research questions are no longer limited to one geographic area but involve comparing the situations of several Asian countries. For example, I helped a student who had been working on the recent construction of water dams in Southeast Asia and the policies of different countries such as China and India. The subject areas studied tend to go beyond traditional literature, history, and cultural studies.

Given the current political tension between the United States and China, have you witnessed an increase in number of reference/research inquiries related to this topic?

I saw an obvious increase of academic books and popular books published on related topics, not just in politics but also in business, law, social sciences, and many other subject areas. We usually do not keep statistics on the number of reference questions in one subject area, so I do not have exact numbers. My impression is that I have received more reference inquiries from students and researchers outside of Pacific and Asian Studies that do not necessarily focus on China and the United States. However, the relations of two large countries cannot be avoided in analyzing many topics in the context of economic globalization.

Given what is currently happening on the political scene in Hong Kong, have you witnessed a major increase in the number of reference/research inquiries related to this topic?

Again, I recently saw an obvious increase of academic books published in North America about Hong Kong. In British Columbia, where Hong Kong immigrants aggregate, the Canadian students born in Hong Kong immigrant families have become more interested in their identities and the current issues happening in Hong Kong. These reference inquiries do not always come from the faculty and students from the Pacific and Asian Studies department. As the Asian Studies librarian, I spend more effort in collecting scholarly publications from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and other places outside of mainland China to balance the collections.

Asian Studies versus other academic disciplines – based on your experience and observation, do you see any major differences in terms of the information needs, research practices, and library usage patterns among the end-users between these academic disciplines?

Each academic discipline has its own challenges for students and researchers. However, faculty and students in Asian Studies face greater challenges in gaining access to research sources especially for those originally created in Asian countries. The books on Linguistics are generally expensive. But if I can find money, in most cases, the library can easily acquire them. For Asian Studies, things are much more complicated. Most academic publishers in Asia do not embrace the idea of e-books, so e-book vendors have difficulty in improving the quality of their e-book packages. During the COVID-19 period, the interlibrary loans of print books stopped in many libraries. For a book request from a faculty, I might face a cul-de-sac situation where no e-book can be found and the interlibrary loans service is unavailable and ordering the print from the Asian countries and shipping it over can take months or longer. Over the years, we have developed a qualified local collection of Asian content to support the needs of teaching and research, however, the print books are not quite accessible for online teaching and learning due to the restriction of copyright and staff labor on scanning.

Videos are commonly used in courses that introduce a different culture and society. The mainstream video streaming services for academic libraries have a poor coverage of Asian content. Libraries still depend heavily on DVD formats to meet the requests, however, DVDs are not helpful for online teaching.

For researchers in Asian Studies, first-hand primary sources are important. Although recently more databases of primary sources have been available on the market, there is still a large amount of content not available for researchers overseas due to different political, geographic, or cost barriers.

For Linguistics and Religious Studies, researchers can find many data sets available at online data repositories to analyze and reuse in their projects. The open-data movement in Asian Studies sources is still at quite an early stage.

What are the new trends in East Asian librarianship in North America?

For this question, each East Asian Studies librarian may have a different answer. I will just talk about the trends I find important.

Open access: The concept of “open access” has been better received by the main libraries in East Asian countries in the past three to five years. Some examples include the open-access databases created by the Institute of History and Philology, Taiwan and the digital collections from the National Diet Library of Japan. Some of the projects were achieved through the cooperation between overseas academic libraries and local libraries in Asian countries. The East Asian Studies librarians usually have the experience of working on open-access projects in their home institutes. They play an important role in advocating “open access” concepts and policies to their colleagues in East Asia and facilitating the sharing of resources.

Open data: Open data has been a popular topic for a couple years at the Council of East Asian Libraries’ Annual Meetings where East Asian Studies librarians and vendors meet. Annually the librarian members of the Committee of Chinese Materials organize the seminars inviting East Asian vendor representatives to have a dialogue with librarians on selected questions. Open data was proposed and discussed repeatedly and more vendors are now willing to share their data with researchers from the subscription institutes for data-mining projects. For East Asian Studies librarians in North America, we also share the important role of advocating for open data to researchers in our home institutes.

Digitization and central platforms: I think that digitization is no longer a new trend. It developed quickly in the area of East Asian Studies partly because many valuable East Asian collections held in North American libraries are great candidates for digitization projects. At least one central platform for discovering and connecting the relevant digital collections are needed and many digital collections of East Asian content are buried several layers down at the home institute library websites. I expect more cooperation efforts in solving these problems.

Cultural literacy and diversity: Libraries are culture agencies. The racial discrimination incidents and the following anti-racism movements that happened during the COVID-19 period make me think about what I can do as an East Asian Studies librarian for society. As someone who has certain knowledge on both sides of the world, it is our social responsibility to use our resources to create an unbiased online representation of East Asian communities and improve mutual understanding in and beyond the home institutes. I think that the East Asian Studies faculty and researchers will share the sense of responsibility. For example, many librarians created the subject guides on anti-oppression and anti-racism. Some librarians joined the activities of Wikipedia-edit-a-thon to highlight Asian Studies sources and help the understanding of local Asian community history.

Digital humanities: Many faculty and researchers in Asian Studies have involved more or less in digital humanities, using new tools to help them design research and curriculum. With more digital humanities tools created and more next-generation researchers joining in Asian Studies, more researchers will also embrace digital humanities. Some great examples include: The Harvard Local Gazetteers Research Tool LoGarT and the Ten Thousand Rooms Project.

What are the new opportunities and challenges currently faced by a majority of the East Asian librarians practicing in North America and other parts of the world?

I talked about the challenges of acquiring Asian Studies sources earlier. Other challenges come from large political contexts such as the tension between China and the United States, which might more or less impact on the future of Chinese Studies in North America. Many academic libraries are going through reorganization and the trend of centralizing and outsourcing the technical service and even reference service invokes questions about the future of subject-specific libraries such as the Asian Studies libraries. There are various good reasons for library administrators to make such decisions, but just like the faculty members providing good-quality scholarly content face to face or online, the subject librarians provide qualified deep reference service for researchers and students in their subject areas. We profoundly get involved in the projects and research process of the students and researchers especially in the area of Asian Studies. This is evidently shown by the close relationship between the Asian Studies faculty and librarians. The AAS has faculty members and librarians working together on various committees and presenting together at conferences. The Asian Studies librarians achieve this because of their subject expertise and their knowledge of Asian Studies sources, tools, and resource markets are greatly appreciated and recognized by scholars.

There have been many discussions about libraries being replaced by the Internet. The roles of academic libraries are expanding rapidly from information providers and curators to information publishers and creators of information. The role change requires the expertise in both information management and the relevant subject areas, so giving up the subject expertise will greatly hurt our profession.

Could you describe your management and leadership style?

My main experience of management is from supervising research assistants and serving as the chair or acting chair of certain committees in and out of the library. I usually prepare adequate training and orientation materials for the students working with me and encourage them to ask questions. For the works to be completed, I have all the requirements fully discussed with them and then spelled out in written documents. I trust the students’ capability of working independently and making good judgments and we book regular meetings to discuss issues and progress. I like to encourage the students to think about alternative solutions, test them, and solve problems in a creative way so that they can learn in the process of asking questions and solving problems.

What parts of your job as the Asian Studies Librarian at UVic do you find most rewarding? And which do you find most frustrating?

For me, the most rewarding part is that the job satisfies my curiosity for knowledge as I am learning all the time and using what I learnt to help the others in a challenging environment. Librarians play an important role in the institutional culture and knowledge mobilization. Sometimes, I get frustrated with the silos and political barriers that are common in large organizations, but I think there is always a way to work around them. Since our library has only one or two Asian Studies subject specialists, we are always in the position of explaining, reminding, and securing the Asian Studies collections and services.

I can use an example to explain how my work supports knowledge mobilization: The World Journal Vancouver (世界日报温哥华版), one of the three main Chinese language newspapers in Vancouver, stopped publication in 2016. The publishing office wished to donate the complete run of the newspaper to an institute and in 2018, recognizing the historical value of this newspaper, the UVic Libraries accepted the donation. I received the Pacific Rim Research Library Alliance 2018 Karl Lo Award and worked on building a digital exhibition of selected articles from the World Journal newspaper as a pilot project in preparation for the newspaper’s mass digitization. We selected around 100 articles to be digitized and translated into English. The translation efforts give a voice to the “silent” Chinese Canadian community. For example, in 1993, there was a Globe & Mail article “Immigrants Leaving Children Home Alone,” criticizing Chinese parents returning to China to make money and leaving their children living alone in Canada.

There were several articles in the World Journal responding to the article, which probably had never caught the attention of the Globe & Mail at the time due to the language barrier. The translation work will make the opinions of Chinese Canadian communities heard and better understood by anyone who cares about the topic. During my work on the exhibition, I have used the sources I collected answering several reference questions from local researchers and scholars from other institutes. The digital exhibition will be launched on the library website and made openly accessible to any researchers.

I understand you have also published extensively issues related to East Asian librarianship, as well as delivering numerous lectures at different national and international conferences. Are you doing all these as part of the job requirement? Or you are doing these as a labor of love? How would such professional sharing activities contribute to the future development of your own career in the long run?

It is partly due to my job requirement and because of my personal curiosity and interest in certain topics. I think of it as tradition for East Asian Studies librarians – many of them hold PhD or Master’s degrees in relevant subjects and experience working on or leading research projects. I learnt and benefited a lot from those senior librarians through my network with other Asian Studies colleagues at CEAL, AAS, and the Society of Chinese Studies Librarians.

Also personal curiosity and interest plays a great role here because scholarly work is only ten percent of my job evaluation but it takes much more effort to publish or work on a research project. When I started working at UVic, I was invited to work as a collaborator on the MCRI/IOWC Project (SSHRC), leading the compilation of a multilingual bibliography on Zheng He, together with Dr Zhongping Chen and Dr Gregory Blue from the UVic History Department. The book project helped me better understand the process of research grant application, project management, supervising and cooperation while also giving me confidence and experience to help undergraduates, graduate students, and young researchers.

When academic libraries are facing great challenges and opportunities, I think the roles of academic libraries have expanded to the creators, publishers, and distributors of information in addition to their traditional roles of collecting and preserving content. The roles of academic librarians will change as well.

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Photo 1.

Credit UVic Photo Services, Librarian Ying Liu at work.

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Photo 2.

Credit Lisa Abram, Mearns Center for Learning and UVic Libraries.

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Photo 3.

SilentSama Photography, Mearns Center for Learning and UVic Libraries.