Knowledge Bank

Universities, institutes, and other organizations establish infrastructures, including libraries, in order to support research, teaching, and service activities. Academic societies sponsor conferences, issue publications, and provide other pieces of the infrastructural puzzle on behalf of entire academic fields and disciplines as well as for sub-specialties within larger fields. Reviewing the history of organizations one can identify the origin and evolution of such support structures. For example, the Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL) is an organization that was founded by librarians and exists to support their work. CEAL's many activities, such as an annual meeting, committees, regular compilations of statistics, publication of a journal and a directory, sponsorship of an email list and a web site, and so on, constitute an infrastructure to support East Asian library collections and the librarians who work in them. Each activity addresses a need. The organization responds with an ongoing commitment to support the activity primarily by providing a structure for organizing the work of volunteers. Traditional infrastructures can be tangible objects, including: buildings, libraries, computing centers, museums, networks, laboratories, computers and peripheral equipment. In addition serial publications such as journals, newsletters and directories can be considered as parts of the infrastructure. Finally, meetings, conferences, administrative structures and support staffing are often essential. What infrastructure needs do developers of electronic resources for Asian studies have? In particular, what infrastructures best support large, distributed, collaborative, digital projects? In what way are those infrastructures similar to the buildings and libraries of institutions or the committees and journals of academic organizations? Are there any special challenges in establishing infrastructures to support electronic resource development? This paper discusses infrastructures that contributed to bringing three collaborative/cooperative projects in which I have been involved to fruition: 1. Japanese Journals Information Web http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu 2. Kinema Club http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Weldome.html 3. AsianDOC Electronic Newsletter http://asiandoc.lib.ohio-state.edu