College and Research Libraries Research Notes COLLEGE & RESEARCH LIBRARIES CONTENTS Zheng Fan 483 Consulting Service at the Library of Tianjin Univer- sity ZHENGFAN Consulting Service at the Library of Tianjin University The Tianjin University is one of the oldest universities of China. Her predecessor was the National Peiyang University, founded in 1895. She was combined with the Hepei In- stitute of Technology in 1951, and the name was changed into Tianjin University. Soon the engineering colleges of Jingu University and Nankai University, as well .as the Chemi- cal Engineering Department of Yanjing Uni- versity and others were merged into the Tian- jin University in 1952. There are thirteen departments and fourteen research institutes at present. The library of this university has a collection of more than one million volumes of books and more than 6, 000 titles of period- icals. The Library of Tianjin University consists of one office and four groups. These are: Ac- quisition and Cataloging Group; Circulating Group; Reference Group; and Literature Searching and Consulting Group (LSCG). The LSCG was established in 1964, elimi- nated in 1966-1979 (a result of actions sup- porting the" gang of four"), and reestablished in May 1979. Its main responsibility is pro- viding literature searching and consulting services. Zheng Fan is head of Literature Searching and Consulting Group , Library of Tianjin University, the People's Republic of China. There were 2,123 written inquiries from January 1962 to October 1980. They may be divided into six categories (table 1). CATEGORIES OF INQUIRIES Literature Searching The purpose of a literature search is to un- derstand the historical background, develop- ment, state of the art, and trends about a topic of research. In the United States, such a search is often done by computer, but it is done manually in our library. The search is often begun by researchers themselves. Occa- sionally, they ask for help from the library. We accepted 242 inquiries in this category. Identification from the Sources Chinese readers often have difficulties TABLE 1 CATEGORIES OF INQUIRIES Category Quantity 1. Literature searching 242 2. Identification from the 1,226 sources 3. Reading problems 324 4. Translation 20 5. Calculating, desi~n and 280 exs.erimental pro lems 6. Ot ers 31 Total 2,123 Percent 11.36 57.75 15.27 0.95 13.20 1.47 100.00 I 483 484 I College & Research Libraries • September 1981 identifying foreign literature sources, be- cause they are unfamiliar with the foreign titles in abbreviation, acronyms, translitera- tions from Japanese or Russian characters, patent numbers and report codes, etc. There were 1,226 inquiries in this category, which was the largest category of our consulting ser- vices, over half (58 percent) of all inquiries. The 1,226 inquiries may be divided by types of literature as shown in table 2. Problems in Reading There are many other questions that may arise when using research literature: personal names; place-names; institution names; trade names; abbreviations; acronyms; loan words; compound words; new technical terms; etc. This category involved 324 inqui- ries, being 15.27 percent of all consulting ser- vices. Translation Mter a preliminary review of the litera- ture, readers may request translation of se- lected foreign articles into Chinese. This cat- egory involved only 20, 0.95 percent of all inquiries. Problems in Calculating, Design, and Experiment This category contained 280 inquiries, 13.20 percent of all inquiries. Most inquiries were to find the physical and chemical prop- erty of substances; data and behavior of ma- terials; standards and product catalogs; types, parameters, and characteristic curves of electron tubes, transistors, or integrated circuits; etc. Others This category included inquiries that did TABLE2 THE TYPES OF 1,226 INQUIRIES Type Quantity Percent Periodicals 592 48.28 Books 207 16.89 Patents 133 10.85 Reports 100 8.16 Standards 72 5.88 Conference ~apers · 71 5.79 Theses and issertations 21 1.72 Chinese materials 20 1.63 Product catalogs 8 0.64 Others 2 0.16 Total 1,226 100.00 not belong to the above five categories, but that also require consulting the literature, such as the departments and research pro- grams of foreign universities, the specialties and works of some experts, etc. There were 31 inquiries in this category, being 1.47 per- cent of the whole consulting service. Among the 2,123 consulting requests, 1,093 inquiries were from teachers, 330 from postgraduates, 579 from undergraduates, and 121 from readers outside the university. EFFECTS Through more than two thousand inqui- ries, we believe that the consulting service is one of the important links in the college and university library. It saves time for the re- searchers, and it speeds up the development of research. To Promote the Development of Scientific Research A scientific research group of our univer- sity engaged in research work for a new prod- uct of GTO (Gate turn off) thyristor. There were no positive results after three years of their experiments. Then this group asked us to provide some relevant literature on this subject. The information provided by us en- lightened the research team. Referring to the literature, they made a series of changes in their experiments. Their new product won the first award from the Tianjin munic:ipal government in February 1980. Full Utilization of the Collection of Our Library A teacher needed a document; its number was R-921-ARPA. The teacher could not in- terpret the code and asked us for help. We discovered that R-921-ARPA is a report from the Rand Corporation, prepared for the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency in No- vember 1971. Its title was "Soviet Chemical . Laser Research: Pulsed Lasers." However, our library did not have R-921-ARPA. Mter further research, we found that the report was also available as AD 740312. Another teacher wanted to read a confer- ence paper, ASME-ASLE Paper No.55-LUB- 22. We found this paper was one of the pa- pers of the Second Annual ASME-ASLE Lubrication Conference in 1955. Its title was "Analysis of Elliptical Bearings," by 0. Pinkus. Through several sources, we located this paper in the Transactions of ASME, Vol.78, No.5, p.965-73, 1956. In both the cases above, through their in- quiries, our teachers more fully utilized the · collection of our library. They avoided time losses and expenses for trips to Peking, dupli- cation, etc. Improvements in the Cataloging Work Sometimes some items could not be located through our catalog. The International Quantum Electronics Conferences used dif- ferent titles for each proceeding; e.g., first proceedings were named as "Quantum Electronics-A Symposium," second named "Advances in Quantum Electronics," third, "Quantum Electronics: Proceedings of the Third International Congress," etc. Sometimes the conferences were held in various countries and the proceedings were also written in various languages; such as the International Symposium on High Speed Photography, the second and tenth proceed- ings in French, fourth and seventh in Ger- man, and others in English. Inquiries about these helped us to improve our cataloging. To Supplement the Library Collection From the readers· inquiries, we came to understand what books were lacking in our library and we tried to acquire them. From an inquiry, we knew an eight-language vol- ume on watches and clocks entitled the "Dic- tionnaire Horloger" published in Switzer- Research Notes I 485 land in 1976 was not in our library. We ordered it for our collection. Dissemination of a Lecture Series on Literature Searching At the invitation of our instructors, we gave a lecture series on literature searching. Subjects included were: internal combustion engines; solar energy; radio electronics; and lasers. These lectures were especially effec- tive when we used specific inquiries to illus- trate how to search literature. To Change the Passive Position into Initiative The consulting work is a passive service, but from the many inquiries received we be- came aware of the activities of our readers. We can now initiate some services, such as collecting and collating information, or com- piling special bibliographies or indexes. Re- cently, a teacher requested information al?out geothermal energy. Soon another teacher repeated this inquiry. We learned that there was a conference on geothermal energy at Tianjin in 1971. So we compiled a special bibliography on geothermal energy. This bibliography was well received and has been heavily used by the teachers of our uni- versity who participated in the discussion by the Geothermal Group of Tianjin. Through the consulting service our library has promoted the development of research, fully utilized its collections, improved the li- brary's services, and has taken the initiative in some areas. REFERENCES 1. Fan, Zheng, "Probing into the Consulting Work of a Library of Engineering University" (Presented at the First National Conference of Chinese Library Society, July 10, 1979, Taiy- uan, Shanxi) (in Chinese). 2. Fan, Zheng. "Probing into the Scientific Litera- ture Searching'' (Presented at the First National Conference of the Scientific and Technical Information Soci- ety of China, December 1979, Kunmin, Yun- nan) (in Chinese). 3. Fan, Zheng. "Techniques and Procedures for Solving the Inquiries on Scientific and Techni- cal Literature," Scientific and Technical Infor- mation Work , no.3:13-16 (1980) (in Chinese). NOW ONLINE! BOOKS IN PRINT AMERICAN MEN AND WOMEN OF SCIENCE ULRICH'S INTERNATIONAL PERIODICALS DIRECTORY Maximize resources while saving time and money ••• Online access is now available initially through Bibliographic Retrieval Services (BRS) to the databases of three of the most frequently consulted Bowker reference books in your library. Employing these databases will provide currency, speed, and accuracy at each step of your reference, research, and acquisitions process. BOOKS IN PRINT Upd ated m o nthl y, th e Bo ok s in Print database prov ides access to current data on o ver 660,000 bibli ographi c entri es o f whi ch 60,000 are Forth comin g Bo ok s up to six month s in ad vance of publi ca ti o n and 40,000 titl es decl ared o ut of print b y publi shers sin ce Jul y 1979. 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