OCLC officially opened the Beijing office with a grand-opening celebration July 20 with more than 150 leaders from libraries and other institutions in China attending. OCLC colleagues from Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand also were in attendance. The OCLC office is located in Zhong Guan Cun, the academic center of Beijing often called "the Silicon Valley of China." Qiu Dongjiang, OCLC Chief Representative, is joined by three other OCLC staff members in the Beijing office.
"Opening this OCLC office in Beijing is truly an historic event," said Jay Jordan, OCLC President and CEO. "We value the relationships we've built with libraries in China over the past 21 years, and we look forward to more opportunities for cooperation in the years ahead. This is an important milestone for OCLC as we continue to evolve into a truly global enterprise that connects East and West and North and South."
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OCLC's relationship with libraries in the People's Republic of China began in 1986 when OCLC introduced its CJK system for cataloging Chinese, Japanese and Korean materials. An OCLC Service Center was established at Tsinghua University in 1996, and access to the OCLC FirstSearch online reference service was made available to about 100 academic institutions in China. In 2004, the CALIS (China Academic Library and Information System) consortium, under the leadership of Beijing University, began providing access to a NetLibrary eBook collection for 80 libraries in China.
OCLC has also been selected as the host site for the 4th China-U.S. Library Conference on October 23-25 in Dublin, Ohio. Last held at Shanghai Library in 2005, this prestigious scholarly conference will bring together leaders from libraries, museums and archives in China and the United States for three days of presentations and meetings regarding cooperation among their institutions in China and the United States.
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