It is a special honour for the Hong Kong Library Association to be
invited as an officiating unit at the Annual Academic Conference organized by
the Guangdong Library Society. The conference was held from 8 to 10
November at the Song Yuan Hotel. The hotel was about thirty minutes’ drive
from the centre of Guangzhou. It was originally designed as a retreat site
for the party leaders and the military personnel. A few low-rise blocks
were constructed amid a large and beautiful piece of green field with a
good variety of trees and flowers. The air was so fresh there.
Before the conference started, the Guangdong Library Society presented outstanding service awards to some elderly librarians in recognition of their valuable contribution to the profession. The oldest recipient librarian was 93 years old and the second oldest was 89. Despite their advanced age, and in fact some of them were not in good physical condition, they tried their best to come and showed their support to the Library Society. The whole audience was much impressed by these committed predecessors. We were also told that a staff of Zhongshan University had already served in the library for sixty years and the University had made a nice celebration for him not long ago.
Other than the representatives of the Hong Kong Library Association, there were about ten participants from Hong Kong and Macau as well. The librarians of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Baptist University and Lingnan University all shared their recent special projects with our Mainland colleagues. I should say that with intensive contacts between China Mainland and Hong Kong, many local Hong Kong librarians can make fluent presentations in Putonghua.
The presentations from Hong Kong were based on concrete projects and focused on the management and services issues of libraries. In contrast, the topics of Mainland librarians covered a much wider scope, to name a few, the relations between economic development and library development, the impact of WTO on library personnel, and applications of Internet filter software in China. From these presentations, we can easily see the cultural differences of these two regions.
In these few days, we saw a lot of exciting developments in Guangzhou. The underground train had been in service for some time. Traffic congestion appeared to be a term of the past. There is no better way to feel the pulse of this fast growing city than walking along the pedestrianized area of Zhongshan Road at night. It was just so crowded. Indeed Guangdong Province is the richest province of China.
In case you have not been visiting Guangzhou in the recent one to two years, I would encourage you to do so. You will be surprised by the new faces at almost all aspects of life. If you have time, I would suggest you pay visits to the Sun Yat-sen Library of the Guangdong Province (provincial library) and the Guangzhou Library (municipal library). They are close to each other. You will definitely see a lot of exciting service developments taking place there.
Tommy Yeung
President