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Chapter 11 - The library you are looking for

This section deals with selection policies, selection practices and the acquisition of library materials and references.

If this section was written a generation ago, selection policies would be limited to the older library culture.

This older culture's prime concern was likely to discuss the need for ever increasing physical space for archiving requirements.

With new technology, our two local area networks (LAN) are housed in a metal cabinet having a footprint of 4 square feet.

Within the data warehouse are library materials equivalent to over one million pages of A4 if the contents of the LAN were printed.

Modern culture attends to the LAN and conventional paper library materials; the LAN being more convenient for machine searching than conventional paper based library materials.

Our acquisition policies for library materials include the provision of computer warehousing of electronic information without infringing copyright.

In Australia, a company can be fined up to $250,000 for infringement of copyright and directors can be imprisoned.

Freedom for us to use copyright is the most vigilantly guarded issue for our organisation and an attempt will be made to describe the circuitous path by which we obtain references where we have freedom from copyright issues and can capitalise on such material as citations in our manuscripts.

Much has been written on the acquisition of library materials.

In 1969 an Ad Hoc Committee of the Acquisitions Section of the Resources and Technical Services Division and of the Library Education Division of the America Library Association recommended that ALA develop and publish a book on acquisitions work that could be used both as a text for library science courses and as a reference book by those actively engaged in the work.

A book was the direct result of that recommendation.

Stephen Ford wrote the definitive book on that time on the topic, 'The Acquisition of Library Materials', which was published by the American Library Association in 1973.

This book was the result of a 1969 recommendation by an Ad Hoc Committee of the Acquisitions Section of the Resources and Technical Services Division and of the Library Education Division of the American Library Association.

The recommendation was that the ALA develop and publish a book on acquisitions work that could be used both as a test for library science courses and as a reference book by those actively engaged in the work.

The writer predicted that the increase in publications of all kinds, in all subject areas, throughout the world, would be an important and challenging feature of the last third of this century.

The ALA book is addressed to a large audience, with stress placed on topics that are of concern to all libraries regardless of size.

Questions to be answered during our performance of acquisition events include the distinction of having a Buddha Dhamma morality policy integrated into the selection policy.

Our acquisition policies are designed to stop greed by our library staff or our donors.

Donations must be motivated by Dana, or generosity, and to allow tax deductibility for donations would encourage motivations contrary to this.

Our Library is not obliged to look after the interests of its donors.

This would allow a situation whereby, for example, a donor could offer a cash donation with the stipulation that it be used for a specific acquisition.

In giving with Dana, or generosity, the donor does not tag the funds donated for specific purposes.

If we let this happen, the direction in which the library collection is developed may lead it to a dead-end where we would be over-developed in one section of our library and under-developed in another.

This type of trend has been common in the way Western contributions to the study of Buddha Dhamma art has been developing over the last few decades.

In Western thinking, there is a strong belief that morphological analysis or successive visual presentations in history (or "period styles") are important.

This is because they provide an independent clue for dating when a work of art was created.

Then, the researcher becomes interested in whether or not the art created represented a new development in form or was an imitation of the style of some earlier art form which is no longer existent.

For nations which value the individual creativity above other things; the creative person is valued even if such a person were extremely selfish and egocentric.

In Buddha Dhamma terms, the personality of the artist is already present in the form of art and it is irrelevant which earlier style is followed in the creation of art.

It is considered very inauspicious for artists not to reflect something of the past Master's styles within their contemporary work.

Our policy of centralised acquisition means we store our library resources at one physical location.

This location has a Hall of Assembly parallel to the main library store.

Our management has specified which category of persons are able to use our library and Hall of Assembly.

The categories are:

1. For the Sangha;
2. For persons wishing to develop faith and confidence this human life;
3. For Devotees;
4. For persons faithful by nature;
5. For those of faithful temperament.

So, all acquisitions must support the acquisition of materials which stand outside the mainstream of Western books and periodicals.

Bibliographic controls are needed to help search our special library references and specialist skills are required to write these controls.

Pamphlets of other organisations are stored in vertical files in service units of our libraries.

In time, we are going to seek permission to scan these pamphlets into our data warehouse so they can be machine searched.

Many pamphlets are as valuable to library patrons as expensive reference books, even though their life spans are short, and these pamphlets deserve as much acquisition time and expense as is necessary to obtain them.

However, our librarians should guard against spending more time on acquisitions than a pamphlet is worth.

Our own pamphlets tell the history of what we offer to persons and how, as time goes by, government or other private organisations offer what we formally offered and we are in a position to cease.

For example, some years ago, we spent considerable time teaching persons how to budget their time and organise their time better for work pleasure and sleep.

Recently, the Australian Government schooling system TAFE has offered such Time Management courses.

These are valuable job skills.

Because of the proliferation of Time Management courses we do not bother to program such matters although we are in a position to offer the use of some relatively advanced Time Management software called RATPAK, which includes, one entry multiplication into Gannt charts.

This means our management systems can schedule best use of our human resources from the hours available of their volunteers.

It also means we can estimate hours needed to perform a given project or we can estimate hours needed for planning a project and track both approaches in the project on the same software package.

This means such software can give automation of library ordering routines which are of major importance in order to save time and not have several persons duplicate the same entry because the software does not integrate files.

When we position the centre of gravity of our collection on practice rather than theory, we must have access to more than one view of any given topic.

There are at least two views;

1. What do you do?
2. What do you not do?

For the first heading, there are at least three views to be sequenced:

1. What do you do now as a first priority?
2. What do you do next as a second priority?
3. What do you do next after next as a third priority?

It is important in Buddha Dhamma to get things in the right order.

This is not self-evident, otherwise every project in the world would never fail.

It is a thousand times more likely that events would be placed in the wrong temporal order than in the "Perfection of Energy" order.

We established a simple Altar for the Deva of learning within our main library complex in our Hall of Assembly.

We do this because we must draw on all the best past experiences of the benevolent beings who have ordered libraries in ancient times and who now exist in their next long life rebirth in various heaven worlds.

As True Buddha Dhamma Followers, our library staff do not worship such beings; they merely request their help with advice on what is the correct order to proceed in doing anything because they know the time, know the place and know the assembly.

We segregate our Buddha Dhamma Deva altar and special library (the references of which are to continue for at least 500 years) from our more traditional management books and journals which are in secondary sites and used by administration to comply with the Australian corporate code for charitable organisations.

For the legal conduct of our organisation, we need the most up-to-date Australian commercial references which are similar to those found in most business libraries.

In Victoria, the State Government Acts and regulations are available in printed form from the State Government printer.

Recently, the Victorian Government have made them available in electronic form from internet sites. Our library service must provide reference access to such vital up-to-date information. The older versions of the Act are archived.

Our code of conduct applies to these archived references stored in other places, ....no killing, and so on.

Our library staff invested many hours to find significant ways to use contemporary guides to designate the materials needed to construct an archive store.

The archive store, which is not a work space, was constructed by Members and commissioned on April 10, 1999, to celebrate the Cambodian New Year Celebrations in Australia.

The building has a approximately 25 cubic meters of storage space and is fitted out with metal wall units which provide an above average fire, water and vermin proofing ratings.

On this secondary library site, we provided a remote altar for the Deva of Protection of Archives which is also known in some cultures as the Deva of moots, drawbridges and protective wall mounds. This Deva enjoys offerings of sea shells.

In other sites, the Deva of Work and the Deva of Wealth look after other secondary libraries. At present, these include professional artist and business management reference libraries.

The demands for objectivity, systematic investigation, and exact measurements have several linguistic consequences.

It is said that emotional comment, humour, figurative expression, and other aspects of personal language tend to be avoided when meeting these notions, (except in writing intended for a lay audience).

Initially, when we are inducting new library helpers, as a training tool, our library staff may find it expedient to choose a half-way position in answering questions in an unbiased manner.

The benefits of a half-way approach is slowly becoming evident to leading scholars in Western countries where a discipline is expanding at a spectacular rate, such as for example, in some aspects of Chinese art studies undertaken in the USA which have had the effect of catalysing interest from both Chines and Japanese connoisseurs in Asia and Europe.

The development of formidable histories in Western art history stimulates the massive acquisition of first-rate Chinese paintings in Western collections, both public and private.

Prices rise for good pieces.

In keeping with the dollar value of a piece, means authors tend to write in sentences that are often long and have a complex internal structure.

The passive construction seems to be favoured.

The intention is straightforward.

It enables a description to be made impersonally.

The same trend is applied to writing about fine and exciting Dhamma objects.

Although these objects may not fully understood at first viewing; over time, they can become a base for Buddha Dhamma practice in the practical sense, because they contain abundant information to impart some knowledge in a visual form.

In particular, this is true of some of our collection of mandalas and thankhas.

A mandala produced by a Monk in Nepal that is held at our Centre is one such example having over 900 beings depicted.

This is a special form of a reference collection, because each being depicted, human and Deva or Devata, carries an measure of the knowledges of Buddha Dhamma.

We would not expect that average Librarians could know how to "turn on" this mandala device to get it to deliver its quota of knowledge.

Destined Members of our library staff are undertaking the Tantra training needed to be bring such mandalas to application in at least some of the domains depicted.

As well as being a piece of art that is sensually pleasurable, the intricacies of the mandala work contain information on a vast number of types of meditation.

These are readily available to persons having prepared minds who seek to view the mandala.

When such rare mandalas are offered to our Library Collection, our Teacher has suggests there is an implicit obligation for the custodians of such an artefact to do offerings to the many Deities depicted within the mandala.

When this is done, the Deities of the mandala perform their specific functions to empower the transmission of understanding many different types of learning from the Tantra written texts we show to our select end-users.

If this concept sounds a shade fanciful to some contemporary hearers, it must be remembered such offerings were a touchstone of knowledge in ancient times.

For example, as Kees W. Bolle (1978) puts it:

"A real fear in Tibet's Mahayana Buddhism was that the most qualified more- than-human powers might pass into nirvana and thus disappear from the world in which need was felt".

Exceptions seem to be made for some Bodhisattvas.

It is said: "With Tara, the fear that she would pass beyond the world did not seem to exist".

Library staff are trained to do offerings before they should proceed with drafting of reviews when they become evolved in editing manuscripts.

Care is needed in editing from the first draft notes which might arise from transcriptions from a Dhamma Talk made by one of our organisation's Members to the handout we may issue for use by Members on meditation courses for the cultivation of Dhamma.

Conventional wisdom has it that editors should establish at the outset exactly what is expected of them on each manuscript.

In fact, the Dhamma editing process we operate tends to become reiterative blending of earlier reports which the library produced as output with current information and testimony.

The first draft usually lacked a foreword to place it in context with what had gone before.

To make each of our papers coherent, a foreword is constructed from knowledge which surfaces from a library search of our references.

Our library search policy is to do the affordable for legitimate queries and ignore general queries outside our speciality.

For example, as policy, we do not expect any surplus staff we may have at a given time to devour our resources by researching some marginal matter, such as, for example, a matter which is useful only to pure Christian interrogation.

We have not the inclination or wealth to be all things to all persons.

In such cases where our library is unable to supply suitable references or direct citations for the universe of discourse we were exploring.

Our practice was to rest for a day or two, make merit, and request the celestial Sangha to overcome the deficiency of reference material.

Our Teacher could expect the synchronised arrival either by post or person of suitable material for any paper he was writing.

At times, our library produces written monograph publications.

These monographs include references to articles published and paradigms based on what was sanctioned by the Students.

Many written reports presented information for management decision.

As Dr. Trevor Bailey (1978) noted communicating in writing demands a certain basic knowledge.

The knowledge depends on knowing what the aims of the organisation are; knowing who the audience is and how you wish to approach them: knowing what you want to communicate and knowing how to do it.

The aim was to help reshape the old linguistic patterns used by Members and making them conform to express themselves in part using an the international standard which used romanised Pali words.

By this technique, our organisation used the English language with a high point of interest by communication with words likely to be familiar to Theravadin Monks and Nuns and laypersons.

The insight into the writing method used was refined over time because if you know what you want to say, it is of no avail if you cannot say it effectively.

Reasons for writing reports are to be persuasive, explanatory, discussive and informative.

It has been said that report writing is neither an art or a science. In our organisation, it is the report writer's responsibility to follow up his or her report.

During 1977 to 1980, a series of discussive reports were drafted by our Teacher - Librarian to turn Member's thought into action.

At formation, it was only our Teacher who had the vision of what the ultimate aim of the library organisation was to build.

That the end-in-view aim was hard to realise by the earlier Members but, even so, should not be mentally turned away meant the initial management style adopted by the Teacher was S1.

Later reports of that era were completed with strong Teacher's editing to avoid errors and omissions in difficult activity.

In those days, reports on the business like operation of the library could not be conditioned by anyone else's views and opinions of what should be included or excluded.

At that time, booksellers in Australia had sales drives to promote as "spiritual" drug culture books by popular "hippie" U.S.A. writers.

Another infamous series of books were written by an Englishman who claimed to have been a Buddhist Monk.

Russell Webb of the Pali Text Society in London suggesting we contact Dr. Richard Gard of IASWR.

Both persons suggested book sellers where we could obtain copies of authentic Dhamma writings in the English language.

Such books were for our Australian library collection.

Less than one year from commencement of communicating with a network of erudite councillors in several overseas countries, commentaries on Bodhisattva texts arrived at the Centre's library.

Fortunately, by 1978, enough merit was available for the "attention" needed to bring a turning-towards of our main library builder's mind-in- action that makes thought support itself in the object of the library collection.

Within a comparatively short time, our organisation founded in a land rich with spurious Buddha Dhamma texts found enough good information and self- possession to be able to recognise spurious texts and cull them from our collection.

About this time, we were blessed by having a Thai forest Ajaan teach on our premises.

The Venerable donated to our library some valuable out-of-print English language texts which were used to train Monks in Thailand.

May all beings be well and happy.

This script was written and edited by John D. Hughes and Leanne Eames.

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