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NAMO
TASSA
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'THE
BUDDHIST HOUR'
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Hillside
Radio 1620 AM, 87.6 FM & 88.0 FM |
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The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast for Sunday 22 July 2001
The topic of today’s broadcast is: Cultivating Usability of a Specialised Library Heritage
We focus on usability.
The delightful pursuit of libraries is cited throughout history. The following quote is by Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) describing Emperor Gordian the Younger.
“Twenty-two thousand acknowledged concubines, and a library of sixty-two thousand volumes attested the variety of his inclinations; and from the productions which he left behind him, it appears that both the one and the other were designed for use rather than for ostentation.”
Cultivating usability of a specialised library heritage is a noble and praiseworthy goal.
We write down our hypotheses about the library and track them over time.
We wrote in our 1998 Report on the Strategy for Advancement of Library Accession Methods: “Our current development goal for the library to date, is to become a third rate library by world standards. At present, the library has some examples of the world’s best Buddha Dhamma reference materials and artefacts”.
To become a third rate library by World standards is our current development goal for the specialist library. (A first rate library should be able to answer 98% of queries within one hour. A second rate library should be able to answer 98% of queries within ten hours. A third rate library should be able to answer 98% of queries within 100 hours. A fourth rate library should be able to answer 98% of queries within 1000 hours. Thus, first rate specialist Buddha Dhamma libraries do not exist in the World at present.)
Also, we wrote “The vision of the team at the Centre’s Collection is to establish the Library as the prime Buddhist information Centre library in Australia.”
At present, the Buddha Net website carries this role (in terms of visitors). We do not know if there is successful planning in place at Buddha Net if the present Sangha Web Master was to leave.
At the commencement of 1997, an average of 50 new books were processed per month. By the end of that year the team could process 100 new books per month. In 1997, this figure exceeded the addition rate per month of new book material.
In November 2000, Members catalogued 301 books over a three day catalogue marathon period. That is an average of 100 per day.
By 30 June 2000, there were 3151 books in both the paper and computer catalogues.
By 30 June this year, there were 3795 books in the catalogues. This is an increase of 644 items or 17% from the previous year.
Presently, we receive 250 new books per month.
At July 2001, we need to catalogue more than 600 Buddha Dhamma books. In addition, we need to catalogue 1000 reference books and dictionaries.
Our goal this year is to reduce this backlog of books. Another marathon, with a target of 1000 books, is planned for August 2001.
Then, we will catalogue our hundreds of Buddha Dhamma newsletters, journals, videos, tapes of Dhamma teachings, CDs, photos, thankas, Buddha images, paintings and pieces of calligraphy, all of which comprise the John D. Hughes Collection.
Our new websites increase our external usability. In 2001, we will continue the establishment of the John D. Hughes Collection as a prime Buddhist information library.
Our Members are increasing their internal use of our resources.
John D. Hughes, Executive Producer of our radio broadcasts, guides Members weekly to become familiar with our library references. Our present mission is to bias present global forces to cause our Buddha Dhamma library to stay serviceable for 500 years. Many methods are used for this purpose. We reflect on Walter Cronkite’s praiseworthy vision in respect to the preservation of libraries.
“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”
We will not allow the accessibility of our library resources to become frozen in future.
Scholarship is one of the five styles of our Centre. Our organisation aspires to devote 2% of our resources to scholarship. Scholarship includes academic achievement or study; learning, erudition.
Presently, we leave this process certification to other institutions. We do not issue qualifications attesting to scholarship.
The Oxford dictionary defines as 1. The action of receiving instruction or acquiring knowledge, a process which leads to the modification of behaviour or the acquisition of new abilities or responses, and which is additional to natural development by growth or maturation; 2. Knowledge of language or literacy or historical science, acquired by systematic study, also the possession of such knowledge, learnedness.
We coach to give both these defined conventional streams of learning and a third one not defined in the West, insight wisdom.
Theories of knowledge have inherent difficulties. Professor A.J. Ayer, Professor of the Philosophy of Mind & Logic at University College, London, wrote of these difficulties in his book called Language Truth & Logic.
In 1960, it appears that there is no possible way of solving the problem of induction, as it is ordinarily conceived.
And this means that it is a fictitious problem, since all genuine problems are at least theoretically capable of being solved. The credit of natural science is not impaired by the fact that some philosophers continue to be puzzled by it.
Insight wisdom undertakes the task of defining rationality. Insight wisdom is direct knowing of a situation free from personality bias. In Pali, it is Yathabutam.
But in achieving this, it does not justify scientific procedure. By itself, the analysis of a synthetic principle tells us nothing whatsoever about its truth.
Unhappily, this fact is generally disregarded by western philosophers who concern themselves with the so-called theory of knowledge.
In saying that the activity of philosophising is essentially analytic, we are not, of course, maintaining that all those who are commonly called philosophers have actually been engaged in carrying out analysis.
Some have been following nonsense questions in the sense of Wittenstein,.
Today, we are not going to give listeners a detailed rationale on our theory of how insight wisdom gives knowledge as recorded in our library texts.
Rather, we intend to expound and tease out some parts of our library ideology that goes towards theories of knowledge that you can hold on faith alone. Other parts we mention rely on insight wisdom that transcend theories of knowledge.
To start off along this track we talk about words.
As Rubin & McNeil cited in “The Psychology of Being Human”, an additional way in which human beings learn - sometimes overlooked because it is so obvious - is with words.
The building blocks of sense or nonsense are words. If their sequence is moved or arranged outside a system, they might come out as exciting or even vibrant in sensation, but they hold no learning. Nonsense can scramble and confuse untrained minds towards a false consciousness.
GIGO, garbage in garbage out applies. We assume that a system of hypothesis which have broken down are likely to break down again.
With ESL (English as a second language,) there is the difficulty in distinguishing between polysemy and homonymy. A word is polysemic when it has more than one meaning. The word plain, for example, has several meanings, including: ‘easy, clear’, ‘undecorated’, ‘not good-looking’ and ‘a level area of land’. Plain is thus polysemic. Two or more words are homonymic when they sound the same but have different meanings. The words I, eye and aye are homonymic: they have different meanings but are pronounced alike.
How do you know when you have separate lexical items rather than a single word with different meanings?
Using spelling as a criterion is misleading: many sets of words are obviously distinct but have the same spelling.
One modestly reliable criterion is the word’s etymology or historical origin.
Our learned written papers are to be spoken aloud, such as, for example, in a radio broadcast.
In this Dhamma ending age, hearing consciousness is the best way to learn According to Manjusri Bodhisattva. We must talk more and more. We must write more and more. Persons must find the conditions they need to listen with attention (sati in Pali).
Our libraries contain words in ordered arrays. More order is added by cataloguing like subject with like subject on the Dewey Decimal System.
The Founder of our Collection, John D. Hughes, teaches to encourage cataloguing. We need more Members to cultivate leisure time with few duties. To allow their minds to be free of clutter and to focus on the task at hand, other persons provide them with food and requisites as they work.
As a consequence, cataloguing rates at our library are quite high. Our teams can catalogue up to 100 books a day when working conditions are ideal. Our Members learn about our reference sections through spending time in the library.
We encourage our Members to use our reference sections for such tasks as writing of radio scripts. Our catalogue is machine searchable.
We regularly use other common references; such as,
The Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition, authors Simpson, J.A. and Weiner E.S.C. (1998) in 20 volumes; A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources, author Menken H. L. (1991); A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, author Partridge Eric (1966) Fowlers Modern English Usage (1990); Encyclopedia Britannica (19XX) and its year books; The Oxford Book of Quotations; and 30 others plus 80 foreign language dictionaries.
These references are not online as they have not been recorded to date in our library catalogue. You can however view some 4000 Dhamma references if you log onto www.bdcu.org.au.
What do our users see? The public only see library work as output and do not see the library back room work as input.
The ordering of volumes and the holding premises is work as input.
The general public do not see the many offerings we do to the Deva of the Library and the Devata of Learning.
We will streamline our work as input to strengthen goodwill for the library. We will assist one another to develop an increase in work as output for Buddha Dhamma English language translations, commentaries, journals, newsletters, radio broadcasts, television programs and information for the Internet. Our knowledge officer is tracking this goal.
We write for English as a Second Language (ESL) clients.
Therefore, we edit to convert passive sentences to an active form. Members edited the number of passive sentences in a previous draft of this broadcast down from 48 to 26.
We want our working areas to be more comfortable. Our next project is to extend our specialised library and reading room space by building a new room. Members are drawing up plans for this new room which includes more library space, a dining room and a kitchen area.
We do not wish to move the location of our main library from our Brooking Street Centre. However, we do have a secondary archive in a room of one of our Member’s houses at Selby.
We actively seek more secondary archive space. We have a backlog of library listings to place on the Internet. For example, the library Founder John D. Hughes recorded and gathered through networking original Australian information about Buddha Dhamma temples and Monks, with funding from the Australian Schools Commission.
This research is unavailable in the reference collections of Australia's older, larger, richer and powerful institution 's libraries.
We will place this research on our own Internet site this year.
This Australian research project ran for three years from 1977-1980, and has been resting in our archives for some time.
Our Australian library will employ a strong local database with 10,000 photographs.
Our library has been listed on Australian libraries gateway for some years and has become a library of national importance. Its on-line publications reach a world audience.
Details of the library, including work in progress, can be found at www.bdcu.org.au. Improvements are made everyday. We have search engines on four of our websites, since July 2001. Web hosts provide these search engines. Christopher Shannon delivered technical support in setting up and running the search engine on www.bdcu.org.au.
Our Members are able to cognate some idea of the importance of specialised libraries through the practical experience of cataloguing our Dhamma books and contributing to the library upkeep.
Only specialist libraries can support pure research. Our library shares no common ground with the average suburban library. It is a fair comment to say that the average suburban library that does not specialise in anything of particular, is of no interest to scholars.
“Every library should try to be complete on something, if only on the history of pinheads.” (O.W. Holmes: The Poet at the Breakfast Table, VIII, 1872).
It is difficult to grasp the notion of a specialist library. It seems to be a luxury. A reference may be held for 30 years before someone needs it.
Students who work in the library must hold the traditional five morality precepts. This means there is no killing of insects, such as silverfish. Members place them outside the site. We must conserve paper. Persons must not steal our rare books and artefacts.
Over time, Members know the good feelings they experience in our specialist library have arisen from blessings from the Deva of Libraries.
One of the highest blessings is the discipline in training the mind in the way of the Dhamma library. According to the Mangala Sutta, one of the highest blessings is “to have done meritorious actions in the past”.
Many beings are blessed upon hearing the Dhamma, as the Buddha stated in the Dharmapada.
Non-specialist libraries in Victoria can access our specialised information from our Website www.bdcu.org.au and our other websites through their Internet reading facilities. We are not brave enough to discard our library card catalogue.
Is the Internet cost effective? To place a book in our Library, card catalogue and computer catalogue costs $25. The cost of providing information becomes 25 cents per person across 100 visits to the Internet. The cost per visit to our physical library cannot match this cost.
When we calculate 1000 visitors viewing our library site, our service cost becomes 2.5 cents per person, per card equivalent.
Our rapidly growing Australian Internet sites has enabled our library of the future to deliver valuable information services to a very wide global audience.
We cannot afford this coverage with printed publications. We encourage you to visit our library information base at www.bdcu.org.au, which is hotlinked to our other sites. Our other web sites are: www.bdcublessings.net.au
We currently have a total of eight web sites, and will have many more in the future.
Through the direction of our resident Teacher, John D. Hughes, our Centre has developed a library resource that will become a respectable 21st Century information organisation.
At present, our library has some excellent examples of the world's specialist Buddha Dhamma reference materials and artefacts. Our calligraphy is of world standard. We will photograph this in due course.
Most of these specialist materials deal with training of the mind, otherwise known as mental culture. This culture is the first step towards taming mental unrest.
“Let every man, if possible, gather some good books under his roof, and gain access for himself and family to some social library. Almost any luxury should be sacrificed to this.” (W.E. Channing: Address in Boston, 1838)
The causes of providing, preserving and making available the instruction sets of how you can do something good for someone, results in a good rebirth for all those involved in our library care processes.
We are not in two minds about our library plans.
You cannot have two opposing sets of thought in your mind at one and the same time. One set of thoughts will always drive the other out. If, for instance, your mind is completely occupied with an unselfish desire to help someone else, you cannot be harbouring fear at the same time.
Many good things come from the preservation of knowledge in our library. “Spin-off” comes in many ways. Our library websites we produce create interesting spin-off.
Recently, a women in Sydney became confident enough about our teaching to email us her emotional problems. She found us by reading our website information.
She chose to ask us to help her in spite of some 60 or more Buddhist temples in Sydney. We telephoned her in response to her email and told her about precepts. She understood where she was going wrong, is much better and more comfortable with her ability to hold precepts. She thanked us for our rapid service.
May you join us in developing our specialised library and attaining the blessings that this effort brings.
We invite you to participate in our Centre's activities by donating Buddha Dhamma books, journals or cash to our library projects. Please make your cheques payable to the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Limited. Such donations are not tax deductible.
May you join us in pursuing the next round of the ‘180 not out’ radio broadcast series.
This script was written and edited by John D. Hughes, Julian Bamford, Jocelyn Hughes, Vanessa Macleod, Lisa Nelson, Rilla Oellien, Anita Svensson and Pennie White.
Disclaimer:
As we, the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd., do not control the actions of our service providers from time to time, make no warranty as to the continuous operation of our website(s). Also, we make no assertion as to the veracity of any of the information included in any of the links with our websites, or an other source accessed through our website(s).
Accordingly, we accept no liability to any user or subsequent third party, either expressed or implied, whether or not caused by error or omission on either our part, or a member, employee or other person associated with the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd.
References Ayer, A. J. (1960) Language, Truth & Logic, Victor Gollancz, Ltd., London.
Brown, L. (1993) The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary, Oxford University Press Inc., New York
Simpson, J.A. and Weiner E.S.C. (1998) The Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition, Clarendon Press, New York.
Partridge E (1966) A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, Butler and Tanner Limited., London.
Menken H. L. (1991) A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles on Ancient and Modern Sources, Knoph Alfred A. , New York.
Rubin Z. and McNeil E.B. (1981) The Psychology of Being Human, Third Edition, Harper & Row, New York.
Finegan, Edward et al (1997) Language - Its structure and use, Second Edition, Harcourt Brace and Company, Australia, p. 178.
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Statistics For more information, contact the Centre or better still, come and visit us. |
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This Radio Script is for Free Distribution. It
contains Buddha Dhamma material and is provided for the purpose of
research and study. © Copyright. The Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. |