The Sage in the Cathedral of Books. Yang Sun Yang
Ministry of Education
Beijing, China
September 2011
FOREWORD V
LATE IN 2007, I was invited to apply for the dean of Libraries vacancy at Ohio University. As I had researched the history of the library and asked senior colleagues about what they knew about Ohio University and the Vernon R. Alden Library, one name always came up: Hwa-Wei Lee. Everyone within the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) community knew him. Hwa-Wei, they told me, helped form OhioLINK, brought modern library technology and practices to Ohio University, earned entrance into ARL for Ohio University, amassed nationally recognized international collections, created the Shao You-Bao Overseas Chinese Documentation and Research Center, and even built a high-density storage facility that now carries his name. It was hardly surprising everyone within ARL spoke so admiringly of Hwa-Wei. And it was, frankly, an intimidating legacy for a first-time dean to follow.
Not long after coming to Ohio University, a note came from Hwa-Wei asking if we could meet for dinner. He and his wife Mary were planning a trip from their home in Florida to Ohio, and they planned a stop in Athens. And, so, on a warm July evening my wife and I met Hwa-Wei and Mary for the first time. In a small, charming restaurant tucked in the Athens countryside, we talked for hours. Instead of the distant and intimidating figure I was expecting, Hwa-Wei proved to be friendly, unassuming, and helpful. It was the first of many long conversations Hwa-Wei, Mary, and I would have. Not only were their help, perspective, and advice invaluable, the scope of all they had done for Ohio University began to become apparent.
But it wasn’t until I traveled to Hong Kong, China, and Japan that I began to understand the extent of their contributions and kindness. At alumni events, library conferences, and university campuses across Asia, I met dozens of former Ohio University students, visitors, and librarians who had benefited from Hwa-Wei and Mary’s generosity. So many of our international alums, who had stayed with Hwa-Wei and Mary for weeks, depended upon them for advice and looked to them as a connection to their homes that were so far away. Librarians told me of how they would visit Ohio University—sometimes for months and without adequate funding—to learn the best practices and the latest technologies in libraries. Many of those librarians are leaders in academic libraries throughout Asia today. It’s hard to exaggerate, then, the influence Hwa-Wei has had on modern Asian librarianship.
His many accomplishments at Ohio University, and then at the Library of Congress, stand for themselves. More importantly, though, are the number of lives he and Mary have touched. They are both testaments to how libraries are much more than collections of books, and the power each of us has to change lives through our generosity.
Scott Seaman
Dean, Ohio University Libraries
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio, U.S.A.
FOREWORD VI
DURING THE fifty years of my library career, especially before my retirement from Ohio University, many of my library friends in China urged me to write a biography in order to share my experiences, not just about my own life, but also about the drastic changes taking place in the library profession both in the U.S. since the 1960s, and in China since the 1980s, in which I have been personally involved almost every step of the way. I consider myself very fortunate to have spent fifty years of my career during the most vibrant time in modern library history. More changes have taken place in these fifty years, than in the past five hundred years. These changes have made my work most exciting and full of challenges. My humble experience, which reflected an epoch-making transformation in modern librarianship, is most memorable and worth being recorded. The key reasons that I did not follow their suggestions were due mainly to my heavy workload, a lack of time for an in-depth evaluation of my own involvement and contributions, and my hesitancy in writing my own autobiography.
In 1997, a good library friend in China, Ms. Wanping Zhang, director of Wuhan Regional Library and Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Science, sent a librarian to Ohio University as a library intern with a special assignment to collect materials in preparation for writing my biography. The librarian, Ms. Hong Lu, an excellent writer, diligently collected much of my personal information including my writings, photographs, and recorded lengthy interviews. After the completion of her internship, Ms. Lu got a job with a Chinese newspaper in San Francisco and decided to stay in the U.S. During her work in San Francisco, she wrote many articles in Chinese about me that were published in Chinese newspapers and journals. Owing to her special talent in writing and hard work, Ms. Lu has published several full-length novels and other books. She has been the editor of the literary journal Chinese Literature of the Americas and serves as the deputy chair of the Association of Chinese American Literary Writers.
In 2008, about the time of my retirement from the Library of Congress, a former graduate student at Ohio University, Ms. Yang Yang, who was also my student assistant during the time that I was the dean of Libraries at OHIO, expressed a strong interest in writing my biography. Ms. Yang was an outstanding graduate student and completed both her master’s degree in Communication and Development Studies and her master’s degree in Business Administration from Ohio University. Yang’s husband, Bo Qu, a former lawyer in China, also came to OHIO and completed his master’s degree in International Development. I knew both of them very well and admired them for their diligence, academic excellence, trustworthiness, and high moral character. After their graduation, both went to work with Dr. You-Bao Shao in Hong Kong, then started their own business and raised their family in Canada, before returning to China where Yang has been working with CCTV in charge of the making and directing of several major documentary films and public programs. Bo continues his successful business enterprise.
With the support of her husband and their two daughters, Yang began her research and writing of my biography in 2009, a task that used up almost all of her free time. The work of writing a full-length biography was by no means an easy task. Being a gifted writer and director of many large documentary films, Yang was not only a good researcher but also an excellent writer. Her writing in Chinese is most beautiful and of high quality.
In 2010, Professor Huanwen Cheng, the university librarian and the dean of the School of Information Management at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China, together with Xi Wu, director of Shenzhen Library; and Honghui Liu, director of Guangdong Provincial Zhongshan Library and the Public Library Research Institute in China, decided to compile and publish Collected Works of Hwa-Wei Lee through Sun Yat-Sen University Press, as well as to hold a symposium titled, “Library Thoughts and Contributions of Hwa-Wei Lee,” held November 17, 2011, at Shenzhen Library to celebrate my eightieth birthday.
Professor Cheng, who was very happy to learn that Yang was working on my biography and was nearly halfway through, immediately got in touch with Yang to ask her to finish the writing by July of 2011. He then arranged to have it published by the Guangxi Normal University Press. Both of these publications were to be officially released at the symposium in November. The special deadline for Yang to finish her writing put a great deal of pressure on her, but she worked extra hard and finished it on time.
After reading the first draft of Yang’s writing, I could not help but be totally impressed and deeply grateful about Yang’s beautiful writing, her profound insight and observations, and her detailed description of my entire professional life. She was able to sort out all the information gathered from my writings, recorded interviews, and others’ writings about me into twenty-six chapters, which also included writing about me and our family by my wife, Mary, and by our six children in the last two chapters.
For the collecting and compiling of my collected works, I am most grateful to a team of faculty members and graduate students under the direction of Professor Xiangjin Tan, dean emeritus of the School of Information Management at Sun Yat-Sen University, and his wife, Professor Yanqun Zhao, dean emeritus of Sun Yat-Sen University Library. Both Professor Tan and Professor Zhao are well known and highly respected in China, not only for their professional accomplishments,