Newsletter No. 406

No. 406, 4.11.2012 3 中大副校長許敬文教授 Prof. Michael Hui, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, CUHK 「我很欣慰資料庫能夠 在2013年五十周年校慶 到來之前完成，我相信 各學系和部門的同事會 善加利用這項資源，它 的貢獻將不止於五十周 年校慶。」 ‘I am pleased to see this accomplished in time for the 50th anniversary celebrations in 2013. I am quite sure that colleagues from all departments and units can make good use of this new resource for purposes not limited to the 50th anniversary.’ 敬文書院院長楊綱凱教授 Prof. Kenneth Young, Master, C.W. Chu College 「數碼版本（免費予教 職員和學生使用，毋須密 碼）非常有用。」 ‘The digital copies (which are freely available to all staff and students without password) are most useful.’ 政治與行政學系主任馬樹人教授 Prof. Ma Shu-yun, Chairman, Department of Government and Public Administration 「去年暑假，我和學生一起研究我們學系課程設計的演 變，沒想到網上有那麼多合用的資料。電子資料庫省卻 了我們以人手逐本查看的工夫。」 ‘Last summer I worked with a group of student helpers on a project about the evolution of our department’s curriculum. We did not expect that so much of the relevant information is available online. This digital archive saves us a lot of otherwise very labour-intensive work.’ 學術交流處主任范瑞欣女士 Ms. Shally Fan, Director of Academic Links 「實在太好了！我只花了一分鐘，便找到中大自1970年以 來跟耶魯大學合作的資料。」 ‘This is fantastic. I found the information on our cooperation with Yale which started in the 70s within one minute.’ T he Information Serivces Office (ISO) has a storeroom on campus housing historical gems of the University. These are old manuscripts, old photographs and past issues of University publications which came out over the last 50 years. Every word and image tells us a little about CUHK and together they tell the history of the University. For decades, these gems have been waiting for a suitable time to come out into the open. A Golden Opportunity Finally, in 2010, an opportunity presented itself— preparations for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of CUHK. ‘The University is celebrating its Golden Jubilee next year. People will take a renewed interest in its past, and demand for texts and photos will increase, so, I applied for funding from the University two years ago, and began to digitize the ISO’s print archive,’ said Mr. Tommy Cho , Director of Information Services. In the past 10 years or so, the ISO’s publications have appeared in both print and electronic formats. As information technology advances, old systems needs to be modified and revamped, and the layouts of different e-publications have to be standardized for ease of search. Mr. Cho said the ISO has so far digitized six titles from the first issue, and besides the PDF format, they have also provided e-books and a search function. Bits and pieces of the University’s buried past have now received a new lease on life. University Publications Digitized and Searchable Prof. Michael Hui , Pro-Vice-Chancellor of CUHK, who supported the digitization project, said, ‘The publications of ISO are high in production value and over the years have formed an institutional repository of important University events and happenings. It is time that these chronicles are digitized and made available at one’s fingertips.’ The digital archive was completed this summer, and Mr. Cho said user response has been positive. ‘During the trial period, colleagues from other departments/units told us that they found the digital archive useful. This is truly good news to our staff who put a lot of effort into it.’ Mr. Li King-kwan George , research assistant, University Gallery, were among the first few who browsed the archive shortly after its establishment. He said, ‘The search function of the ISO’s main page allows me to retrieve the desired information very quickly. It saves my time and now I don’t need to check publications page by page.’ Retrieving Lost or Misplaced Copies Some of the University’s old publications were lost due to the absence of a comprehensive filing system, a suitable place for long-term storage and several relocations. Ms. Bonnie Ko , senior web manager, said ISO staff had combed the University and government departments for these missing copies by making enquiries to individual units. ‘It is important to have all the copies. As the ISO is the official information provider of the University, we must present the e-copies in full sets and make sure the contents are there. That is our mission of setting up the archive.’ One of the best examples is the recovery of the Chinese version of the CUHK Calendar (1969–1970) from the University Secretariat, which was the only copy available. Thanks to the digitization project, many valuable publications have been preserved and are now available for the benefit of CUHK members and the public. A User-friendly Interface The ISO’s e-books are easy to read because of their user-friendly designs. The layout is neat, the images are clear, and fonts and images can be enlarged or shrunk at the press of a button. They also come with a table of contents, pagination, content thumbnails, and other one-click functions like printing, searching, sharing, and bookmarks linked to social websites. If the publication is bilingual, users can click their language of choice on the top bar. Ms. Ko said, ‘The design of the user interface is simple to understand and very easy to use. The tedious scanning, optical character recognition (OCR) application, proofreading, formatting and uploading work were done by a small team, and we’ve encountered numerous difficulties during the process of digitization. But luckily our staff’s ability to innovate meant we always managed to come up with solutions. The experience has been invaluable and the ISO is happy to share it with departments/units that want to pursue similar projects. We can tell them how we chose the appropriate content management platform, applied OCR software and PDF files editing software.’ Future Development Following the completion of the digital archive, the ISO is planning to further enhance online contents to include non-recurrent publications. For ease of search, a more detailed method of categorizing online contents will be explored. The ISO is also going to make the archive more convenient for mobile devices such as smart phones and tablet computers. Mr. Cho concluded, ‘The digital archive is not going to remain stagnant. Whenever an ISO publication is released, it will be automatically and instantaneously archived, and this database will become a reliable and easy-to- manage system for the entire University.’ The ISO digital archive is indeed a treasure trove of life, events and sentiments related to the Chinese University. And we and our successors all hold the key to it. www.iso.cuhk.edu.hk