scarcity of ready-to-use reference materials adds hardship to the writing of a library specialist’s biography, as the writer has to collect a large amount of first-hand data, in addition to researching the historical and cultural background of the subject.
Writing a biography of Dr. Lee is even more difficult because of his extensive and diverse background in various organizations, including Ohio University and the Library of Congress; and involvement in world regions, including mainland China, Taiwan, the United States, and Thailand. This difficulty is compounded by his year-round international trips between the East and the West, through which he left his footprints on numerous cities of the two continents.
Meaningful integration of the resources necessary for a single biography is more difficult than simple resource collection. To reach readers within the general public as well as other library professionals, Yang Yang employed an admirable approach and strategy in writing this biography. Her writing from a journalistic angle allowed a more vivid portrayal of Dr. Lee, creating a story that was compelling and accessible to the general public, one that ultimately also promoted librarianship and the library sciences.
The writing of the biography features Yang Yang’s in-depth reporting skill. The book begins with a prologue telling of Dr. Lee’s retirement party at the Library of Congress (LC), a celebration full of compliments, attended by many high-profile admirers including Dr. James H. Billington, librarian of Congress; Dr. Deanna Marcum, associate librarian of LC; congressmen; senior officers from the federal government; and Dr. Lee’s colleagues at LC. Yang Yang’s decision to begin Dr. Lee’s story with a flashback made the entire biography enchanting from the very beginning and enhanced the readability and charm of the book.
Divided into twenty-six chapters telling Dr. Lee’s story in chronological order, each Chinese title comprised of a short four-character phrase (my suggestion), this book encompasses the personal, professional, and academic life of Dr. Lee from his childhood to his post-retirement years. Yang Yang’s unique and elegant writing style depicts, on an extensive scale, in simple words, many anecdotes about books, people, things, and emotions that played an important part in the life of Dr. Lee. Rich in its humanistic approach, the biography succeeds in representing Dr. Lee, who functioned in an area of knowledge little known to those outside his field, as a wise and kind man to the general public.
During the course of writing, Yang Yang sent finished texts to Dr. Lee for review and feedback to avoid any mistakes. Once the entire manuscript was completed, Yang Yang continued to exchange ideas with me, making an effort to select an appropriate title until finally deciding upon this current one, The Sage in the Cathedral of Books.
Her process in choosing her title illustrates the same spirit shown in her writing—Yang Yang’s striving for perfection. The two books, The Sage in the Cathedral of Books and Collected Works of Hwa-Wei Lee complement one another. Reading them together allows one to gain a holistic picture of Dr. Lee, to understand his great contribution to librarianship and library scholarship and thought, and to learn of his elegant, kindhearted, and life-affirming aspects.
Huanwen Cheng
Professor and University Librarian
Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China
October 3, 2011
FOREWORD II
DR. HWA-WEI LEE is widely recognized as a highly accomplished, world-class library professional and administrator, as showcased in the simultaneous publication of two books: Yang Yang’s, The Sage in the Cathedral of Books: The Distinguished Chinese American Library Professional Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee, and Collected Works of Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee. To an entire generation of library professionals, however, Dr. Lee is more than that: He is an ambassador of international librarianship, the first overseas library professional to come to China at the initial stage of the Chinese economic reform and open-door policy. It was Dr. Lee who held our hands and led us to the outside world.
Back in the early 1980s, I was a librarian at Peking University Library, and, like my peers, young junior scholars, hungered for the outside world beyond China. Dr. Lee’s visit brought us a vivid depiction and expert interpretation of the libraries and librarianship on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, which were far richer than what we could perceive from just reading documents and reports by foreigners. Dr. Lee was always tireless and scrupulous and never seemed to look down on those of us who frequently threw brusque and ignorant inquiries of all kinds at him. He never forgot to say a few encouraging words to us after having addressed our, often, dumb questions.
Shortly thereafter, quite a few young librarians from Peking University Libraries were sent one after another to participate in the International Librarians Exchange Program at Ohio University, an exchange created and developed under Dr. Lee’s administration as the dean of Libraries. I was originally on that exchange list but was later reassigned to an unsuccessful international exchange program with Australia. I have been bothered by the loss of that training opportunity at Ohio University, especially after I learned that the multi-year program, which continued from 1979 to 1999, had welcomed more than 150 librarians from mainland China from 1983 to 1999, with each participant receiving a half-year to one full year of training. Many of those librarians later became the elite in Chinese librarianship and made great contributions to the advancement of the field.
Dr. Lee’s influence has been felt across all the institutions where I have worked—from Peking University, to the Library Department of the Ministry of Culture, to Shenzhen Library. He has never stopped building the connection between Chinese librarianship and American/international librarianship.
Dr. Lee is renowned as an academic ambassador of international librarianship among the Chinese library community to which he devoted many years of tireless effort. In addition to his library consultant title at Shenzhen Library (one he served during my term there), he has been invited to serve as a guest faculty member, visiting professor, and academic adviser by at least twenty institutions of higher education and research libraries including: Peking University, Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Beijing Normal University, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunication, Xian Jiaotong University, Nankai University, Hunan Medical University, Wuhan University, Sichuan University, Northeast Normal University, Tianjin Polytechnic, National Library of China, Zhejiang Provincial Library, the central and branch (Lanzhou and Wuhan) libraries of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the National Central Library of Taiwan.
In addition, Dr. Lee was honored as a lifetime member of the Library Society of China at its 2005 annual conference. All these real and honorary titles highlight his remarkable achievements over the years.
This biography by Yang Yang shows a clear picture of an engaged and accomplished professional in the Chinese librarianship field. Dr. Lee has made at least one trip, “returning home,” each year since 1982 to give lectures or attend conferences in China, making him much closer and more approachable to us. In addition, he has organized or contributed to a countless number of scholarly activities, which have exerted a tremendous impact on governmental and nongovernmental entities. It is hard to imagine that Dr. Lee accomplished all this during his busy administrative career at Ohio University Libraries and the Library of Congress. Dr. Lee’s “returning home” trips have never stopped, even after his retirement from LC in 2008. He is still traveling between China and the U.S., making his tireless contribution to the “China-U.S. Librarians Professional Exchange Project,” of which Dr. Lee was one of the initiators. Thousands of Chinese library professionals have benefited from the project.
The most precise and descriptive acclaim that Chinese people use to applaud Dr. Lee’s accomplishment is “a hub connecting the East and the West and a bridge [connecting] China and the United States.”
As
