Was erwartet die Sinologie von den Bibliothekaren und Bibliographen?

Abstract

While students of medicine, science and technology have a growing number of data bases at their disposal, sinologists rely mainly on bibliographies and other printed reference material. The article gives a survey of the current situation of bibliographical control in Chinese studies and points out desiderata and lacunae. The emphasis is on bibliographies and indexes which may be compiled efficiently by using a personal computer and commercial database software. The author stresses the necessity of using proper bibliographic methods and checking the original information. Mere compilation of second-hand data is often misleading and causes irritation. Although it would be easy to distribute research aids and reference tools on floppy disks, most students and libraries in Europe are not prepared to handle them: incompatible hard- or software, lack of the hard disk storage space and copyright questions are the main obstacles. For this reason the article only discusses subject matter and concept of the needed reference material, but does not dwell on the techniques of data processing and the use of multi-access media.