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FOREWORD VI

DURING THE fifty years of my library career, especially before my retirement from Ohio University, many of my library friends in China urged me to write a biography in order to share my experiences, not just about my own life, but also about the drastic changes taking place in the library profession both in the U.S. since the 1960s, and in China since the 1980s, in which I have been personally involved almost every step of the way. I consider myself very fortunate to have spent fifty years of my career during the most vibrant time in modern library history. More changes have taken place in these fifty years, than in the past five hundred years. These changes have made my work most exciting and full of challenges. My humble experience, which reflected an epoch-making transformation in modern librarianship, is most memorable and worth being recorded. The key reasons that I did not follow their suggestions were due mainly to my heavy workload, a lack of time for an in-depth evaluation of my own involvement and contributions, and my hesitancy in writing my own autobiography.

In 1997, a good library friend in China, Ms. Wanping Zhang, director of Wuhan Regional Library and Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Science, sent a librarian to Ohio University as a library intern with a special assignment to collect materials in preparation for writing my biography. The librarian, Ms. Hong Lu, an excellent writer, diligently collected much of my personal information including my writings, photographs, and recorded lengthy interviews. After the completion of her internship, Ms. Lu got a job with a Chinese newspaper in San Francisco and decided to stay in the U.S. During her work in San Francisco, she wrote many articles in Chinese about me that were published in Chinese newspapers and journals. Owing to her special talent in writing and hard work, Ms. Lu has published several full-length novels and other books. She has been the editor of the literary journal Chinese Literature of the Americas and serves as the deputy chair of the Association of Chinese American Literary Writers.

In 2008, about the time of my retirement from the Library of Congress, a former graduate student at Ohio University, Ms. Yang Yang, who was also my student assistant during the time that I was the dean of Libraries at OHIO, expressed a strong interest in writing my biography. Ms. Yang was an outstanding graduate student and completed both her master’s degree in Communication and Development Studies and her master’s degree in Business Administration from Ohio University. Yang’s husband, Bo Qu, a former lawyer in China, also came to OHIO and completed his master’s degree in International Development. I knew both of them very well and admired them for their diligence, academic excellence, trustworthiness, and high moral character. After their graduation, both went to work with Dr. You-Bao Shao in Hong Kong, then started their own business and raised their family in Canada, before returning to China where Yang has been working with CCTV in charge of the making and directing of several major documentary films and public programs. Bo continues his successful business enterprise.

With the support of her husband and their two daughters, Yang began her research and writing of my biography in 2009, a task that used up almost all of her free time. The work of writing a full-length biography was by no means an easy task. Being a gifted writer and director of many large documentary films, Yang was not only a good researcher but also an excellent writer. Her writing in Chinese is most beautiful and of high quality.

In 2010, Professor Huanwen Cheng, the university librarian and the dean of the School of Information Management at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China, together with Xi Wu, director of Shenzhen Library; and Honghui Liu, director of Guangdong Provincial Zhongshan Library and the Public Library Research Institute in China, decided to compile and publish Collected Works of Hwa-Wei Lee through Sun Yat-Sen University Press, as well as to hold a symposium titled, “Library Thoughts and Contributions of Hwa-Wei Lee,” held November 17, 2011, at Shenzhen Library to celebrate my eightieth birthday.

Professor Cheng, who was very happy to learn that Yang was working on my biography and was nearly halfway through, immediately got in touch with Yang to ask her to finish the writing by July of 2011. He then arranged to have it published by the Guangxi Normal University Press. Both of these publications were to be officially released at the symposium in November. The special deadline for Yang to finish her writing put a great deal of pressure on her, but she worked extra hard and finished it on time.

After reading the first draft of Yang’s writing, I could not help but be totally impressed and deeply grateful about Yang’s beautiful writing, her profound insight and observations, and her detailed description of my entire professional life. She was able to sort out all the information gathered from my writings, recorded interviews, and others’ writings about me into twenty-six chapters, which also included writing about me and our family by my wife, Mary, and by our six children in the last two chapters.

For the collecting and compiling of my collected works, I am most grateful to a team of faculty members and graduate students under the direction of Professor Xiangjin Tan, dean emeritus of the School of Information Management at Sun Yat-Sen University, and his wife, Professor Yanqun Zhao, dean emeritus of Sun Yat-Sen University Library. Both Professor Tan and Professor Zhao are well known and highly respected in China, not only for their professional accomplishments, with both holding key library positions, but also for their perfect marriage as a model couple. They were assisted by Dr. Yantao Pan, a senior faculty member, and a number of doctoral students. They spent nearly a year, including the entire summer of 2011 to work on the project, which resulted in the publication of two beautiful volumes (1565 pages) of my collected works by the Sun Yat-Sen University Press. As I learned later, despite his busy work, Professor Huanwen Cheng reviewed the entire manuscript before its publication.

For my biography, I am deeply grateful to Professor Huanwen Cheng, Director Xi Wu, university librarian Shoujing Zhuang, and Director Zhejiang Dong, all of whom are my dear friends and library colleagues in China, for their writing of the forewords. In addition to their friendship, I also benefited from their professional counsel in a joint effort to speed up library development in China as well as to promote U.S.-China library cooperation.

Before the publication of this English edition of my biography, the original Chinese edition written by Yang Yang was first published in China in 2011 in simplified Chinese characters. Later on, a Taiwanese edition in traditional Chinese characters was published in Taiwan in 2014. The Taiwan edition, which was published by Showwe Information Technology Ltd in Taipei, included not only more photographs, but also some of the sections deleted from the Chinese edition.

Since the publication of both the mainland Chinese edition and the Taiwan edition, many of my American friends and my family members wanted to know if I was to have the biography translated into English and published in the U.S. It was very fortunate that another of my good friends, Dr. Ying Zhang, a former graduate student at Sun Yat-Sen University who later completed her Ph.D. in Library and Information Science from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, volunteered to translate the Taiwan edition of my biography into English. Ying has a full-time job as an Asian Studies’ research librarian at the University of California at Irvine, but like Yang Yang, she devoted more than a year of her leisure time doing the translation. Owning to her tireless efforts, the translation was completed in August 2014.

Because the original biography was written more than three years ago, I took the opportunity to revise and update many parts of it. Both my wife, Mary, and our son, Robert, also spent many hours editing the English translation.

I am especially grateful to Scott Seaman, dean of Ohio University Libraries, for his strong encouragement in having the biography translated from Chinese into English. Dean Seaman also contacted the Ohio University Press to have the English edition published as one of the volumes in the Ohio University “1804 Books Imprint.”

As the former dean of Ohio University Libraries, from 1978 to 1999, a major part of this biography covers the significant development of the Libraries during the period of drastic transformation from a paper-based library to a computer, networked, electronic, digital, and web-based library in fast progression. It also documented: the endeavors in creating the ALICE library automation system; the formation of OhioLINK; major endeavors in fundraising; the expansion of world renowned international collections; providing service to Ohio Valley Area Libraries; the promotion of international librarianship; and the attainment of membership status in the Association of Research Libraries.

All of these could not have been accomplished without the guidance and support of President Charles J. Ping and his successor, President Robert Glidden. Their superior leadership and the extraordinary administrative team including all the provosts, vice presidents, deans, and directors, with whom I had the privilege to be associated contributed to the success of my work. I must also acknowledge the superior teamwork of my library colleagues whose dedication, diligence, and hard work had enabled my many accomplishments. I am forever indebted to all of them.

For this English edition of my biography, I am deeply indebted to Scott Seaman, dean of Ohio University Libraries; Kate Mason, coordinator of communications & assistant to the dean; and Rob Dakin, records management specialist, who provided the necessary professional copy editing of the entire manuscript for publication. I also want to thank Ms. Gillian Berchowitz, director of Ohio University Press, and her able staff for their expertise and professionalism in the final editing and publication of this biography, which is far beyond my expectation.

After spending twenty-one years of my library career at Ohio University, it is my great honor to dedicate this biography to Ohio University for which I owe my profound gratitude.

Hwa-Wei Lee