Korean American Librarians and Information Professionals Association (KALIPA)
Quarterly Meeting Minutes

1. Time: September 21, 2001 at 6:30 p.m.

2. Place: Korean Cultural Center Library, Los Angeles, California

3. Attendees: Choonhee Rhim, Young Sil Lee, Miki Lim, Keumsook Han, Agnes Song, Joy Kim, Sunyoon Lee, Jina Wakimoto, Mikyung Han, Sejung Kim, Heawon Paick, Kyong Hyon Cho.

4. Guests: Pyong Su Im (New Director of Korean Cultural Center), Kyu Hak Choi (Consul).

5. New Director of the Korean Cultural Center, Pyong Su Im: Director Im introduced himself and explained his plans to expand the services at the Korean Cultural Center in collaboration with the Korean-American community in Los Angeles. He was especially interested in improving the services of the Korean Cultural Center Library and asked the Korean American librarians to give him ideas and input.

6. Introduction of the Korean Cultural Center Library: The library has been in the process of automation since November, 2000. There are approximately 15,000 volumes of books and 40-50 % of its collection are entered into the online database. The online database is developed specifically for the Korean Cultural Center Library with circulation and technical service functions. For cataloging, the records were created in Korean with Library of Congress subject headings and Dewey Decimal Classification system.

7. Cooperation and Resource Sharing between the Korean Cultural Center Library and the Other Libraries: It was suggested that the Korean Cultural Center Library plays a role of Korean resource center to provide and disseminate information about Korea. In other words, public libraries collect popular Korean language materials for the general public and the Korean Cultural Center library focuses on materials that are more pertinent to Korea such as government publications and other official documents that public libraries, or even academic libraries cannot obtain easily. It was also suggested that the Korean Cultural Center Library donate outdated government publications to the academic libraries.

8. Report on Library Education Needs Assessment Project Meeting held at Stanford University from April 9-10, 2001: Joy Kim attended representing KALIPA. An Advisory Group was formed and conducted a need assessment survey for continuing education for librarians. The follow-up meeting to discuss the results of the survey was supposed to be held on Sept. 12, 2001; however due to the World Trade Center tragedy on September 11, it was cancelled and postponed.

9. Report on National Conference on Asian Pacific American Librarians (NCAPAL) and America Library Association (ALA) held in San Francisco during June 13-20, 2001: KALIPA had a very successful poster presentation at NCAPAL. It drew quite a number of people and raised awareness of the existence of KALIPA. KALIPA member Jina Wakimoto made a presentation at NCAPAL: "Heritage at Work: Putting Culture into What We Do" which described Korean cultural activities she had at California State University, Northridge. Another member, Charlotte Kim also spoke on "Shattering the Glass Ceiling: Diversity and Mid-Level Career Development" describing her own experiences in shattering the glass ceiling and discussed whether there's a glass ceiling for Asian American librarians in promotion.

10. Dinner sponsored by KALIPA on June 15, 2001: KALIPA held a dinner to get acquainted with other Korean American librarians across the country during ALA in San Francisco. About 15 members including the President of the Korean Librarians Association in Korea attended the dinner. Numerous ideas were exchanged to expand the activities of KALIPA. Establishing regional chapters was considered to be the top priority. KALIPA president, Choonhee Rhim asked members to start planning the regional chapters.

11. KALIPA Scholarship: It was decided that the KALIPA would award one scholarship of $500.00 to a student of Korean heritage studying library and information science for the year 2002. The deadline for the application is November 30, 2001. The recipient of the scholarship will be announced by the end of January 2002.

12. The meeting was adjourned at 8:45 p.m.