PRDLA

The 2010 PRDLA annual meeting will be hosted by Fudan University in Shanghai, China 20-22 October. Tickets for the World Expo to be held in Shanghai 1 May – 31 October have already been booked so that PRDLA meeting attendees may tour the Expo after the meeting. Save the dates!

David Palmer (Hong Kong University) has published an article in Serials Review describing the development of the Pacific Rim Library and its effectiveness in revealing objects in digital collections that are hidden in the Deep Web.

PRDLA is pleased to announce that the Karl Lo Award has been presented to Paolina Martin, Singapore Management University, and to Patrick Pu, National University of Singapore. Ms. Martin is the director of the Institutional Repository at Li Ka Shing Library and a metadata librarian, and works on the development of policies, practices and the system for knowledge management at SMU. Mr. Pu is the NUS Libraries web master and the leader for the Engineering/Computer Science Resource Team. Both librarians will be funded to attend the 2009 PRDLA Meeting in Auckland, New Zealand. Congratulations!

The Pacific Rim Library (PRL – pronounced “pearl”, formerly PRDLA Archive) is an ongoing project to collocate metadata from PRDLA member digitization projects and to maximize exposure of the metadata to the large data aggregators.  The PRL server repository is hosted by the University of Hong Kong Library.  Search access is via the PRDLA web site Resources section or via direct access at http://prdlaarchive.lib.hku.hk/.  PRL provides search access for the collocated metadata and serves as an efficient resource to expose the digital assets of PRDLA members to Google and, thus, to ensure access by the largest and broadest audience.  PRL promotes PRDLA by creating awareness among its users.

At the 2008 PRDLA membership meeting, there was a consensus to further develop the design and branding of PRL in order to promote its collections. A task group will be charged to develop a proposal for a design process for PRL and the PRDLA website.

The PRDLA Secretariat is now accepting applications for the Karl Lo Award, which provides support to PRDLA librarians for professional development and research focused on Pacific Rim library collaboration and digital library issues.