Too often, academic library selectors of DVDs purchase Japanese animation (anime) for their popularity without any further concern of their important contributions to the combined…
Abstract
Purpose
Too often, academic library selectors of DVDs purchase Japanese animation (anime) for their popularity without any further concern of their important contributions to the combined wealth of researches of an academic library. The purpose of this paper is to offer considerations for an academic selector to ponder before adding this particular type of animation. These considerations do not necessary pertain to the collection development considerations for selectors at public libraries.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper will discuss the major problems of actively adding anime to an academic library, the present areas of concern, and will offer warnings and suggestions based on a conceptual framework of anime having true academic value.
Findings
Anime cannot be chosen independently as if it has any apparently intrinsic value sui generis. Anime must be added concomitantly according to the collection development policies with other resources, especially DVDs, to create a full, rich and useful collection to scholars.
Originality/value
Academic studies concerning anime and collection development for academic libraries are usually comprised of only long lists of suggested anime, with no further discussions about its implications to the general worth of an academic library. This paper offers no such lists. Instead, it offers considerations selectors must take into account before investing time and money adding anime to an academic library collection.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to investigate if collection developers in American academic libraries have added predominantly “yellowface” movies to their collections, or have…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate if collection developers in American academic libraries have added predominantly “yellowface” movies to their collections, or have actively sought out movies created and acted by Asian and Asian Americans, to balance out their libraries' collections.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, ten acknowledged “yellowface” movies and ten critically acclaimed Asian and Asian American movies were chosen. The collections of 157 academic libraries throughout the entire USA were then surveyed, including geographical areas that have had very few Asians or Asian Americans in their populations throughout their histories.
Findings
The results show that neither “yellowface” movies nor Asian and Asian American movies are overtly dominant in the collections of American academic librarians, and one can conclude that the collection developers actively sought to find a balance between movies in both categories, no matter the geographical locations of their libraries.
Social implications
No matter how unsavory is our racist past, representations of past bigotry and discrimination should be available for scholars of history, cultural studies, and sociology. However, interpretations of Asians defined with this jaundiced eye must be balanced with movies of Asians and Asian Americans defining themselves.
Originality/value
The area of Asian and Asian American movies is rather small and arcane, yet the results of this survey show that there are no academic areas too small or narrow that do not demand the attention of a knowledgeable collection developer.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to show that scholars who choose not to use a well-established or acknowledged transliterated subject term, and instead decide for themselves to use…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to show that scholars who choose not to use a well-established or acknowledged transliterated subject term, and instead decide for themselves to use synonyms, further complicate the process of doing comprehensive searches and greatly limit the ability to retrieve many pertinent works. In the research into world religions, there are transliterated words of a religious concept that can be used as subject terms. However, scholars in world religions have often not chosen the transliterated word, and instead have adopted words they believe are adequate synonyms of the transliterated word and use them to categorize their professional work. This paper shows how this practice severely lessens the ability to retrieve all pertinent work and causes problems for both world religion scholars wishing to perform comprehensive searches and librarian cataloger deciding on the proper subject terms to include in the construction of citations.
Design/methodology/approach
The Buddhist transliterated term into English “sunyata” and the scholarly created, synonymous English subject terms “emptiness”, “nothingness”, “voidness” and “openness” were searched in an international database of religious and theological works. The lists of retrieved Buddhist works were then compared to see if the results of each independent search were identical.
Findings
There is a very low rate of overlapping retrieval of Buddhist works when the term “sunyata” and each of the scholarly created synonyms are searched independently of each other. The use of scholar-created, synonymous subject terms instead of the transliterated term has greatly diminished comprehensive retrievals.
Originality/value
There is a paucity of articles concerning the negative effects of scholarly created, synonymous search terms in general, and in world religions in particular. These results present the dangers of this practice.