About the Portal to Asian Internet Resources

Project Overview

The Portal to Asian Internet Resources, based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a cooperative project of The Ohio State University Libraries, the University of Minnesota Libraries, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.

The project provides a user-friendly, searchable catalog through which scholars, students and the general public have quick and easy access to high quality Web resources originating in Asia identified, evaluated, selected and cataloged by area library specialists.

The catalog offers an entry point to quality Asian materials that too often are neither easily identifiable nor usable due to the limitations of existing search engines. Materials support research and teaching in higher education and benefit scholars who do not have ready access to the expertise of area library specialists and collections of major research libraries as well as business, government and media professionals and other audiences.

 


Collection Scope


The catalog presents freely available Internet resources for research and study of modern East, Central, South, and Southeast Asia on a broad range of topics in the humanities and social sciences. Resources are from various sources including academic, government, commercial, trade and industry, and non-governmental organizations.

The catalog includes current information and data such as bibliographies and databases, data sets, newspapers and journals, government reports, and organization sites. Resources are in English and/or one or more of 27 Asian languages. See Collection Scope (below) for more information about the collection.

PAIR Project resources outlined within the collection scope will be assessed according to the PAIR Project’s selection criteria.

Information Coverage

Subject Matter. Information relevant to the study of modern Central Asian, East Asian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian societies by researchers, students, and practitioners in the social sciences available in Internet resources from Asia will be included in the PAIR Project Catalog.

The collection covers a broad range of disciplines such as business and economics, education, political science, and sociology and topics such as banking and finance, demography and population, environment, gender, health, industry and trade, and politics, government, and international relations. Project staff identify and select resources on the following subjects.

Acceptable Sources. Information from academic, government, commercial, trade and industry, non-profit and private sources are all acceptable provided that they fall under acceptable subject matter and selection criteria. Personal pages as a general rule will not be included.

Acceptable Levels of Difficulty. The content of the resources should be at a level suitable for higher education. Information that is scholarly rather than popular is the preferred choice.

Acceptable Types of Resources. Resources should be available freely on the Internet and will include, but not be limited to, textual documents, datasets, sound, and video. Resources consisting entirely of a set of links to other resources will not be included unless there is substantial value-added information by means of annotations.

Geographical Coverage

Geographical Restraints. Geographical coverage of resources is the regions and countries of Central, East, South, and Southeast Asia.

Language. Resources in English as well as the vernacular languages of Asian countries including those in non-Roman script are included.

Access Issues

Cost. Only resources freely available will be included.

Registration. Resources which require the user to register before use will be considered. When such resources are included, appropriate information on registration will be provided in the catalog record.

 


Selection and Cataloging Methods


The Ohio-Minnesota-Wisconsin partnership is organized around the Asia library strengths of the respective institutions. Area library specialists in Japan at Ohio State; China, Korea, Central and Southeast Asia at Wisconsin; and South Asia at Minnesota identify, evaluate, select, and catalog Web resources.

Resources are selected on the basis of quality criteria such as accuracy, authority, uniqueness, currency, organization and navigation features, accessibility without undue restrictions at a stable address, and relevance to scholarly research. Professional librarians then catalog the resources according to Dublin Core, an emerging metadata standard for electronic resources.

For more information about this standard, see the homepage of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. See the Cataloging Policies (below) for information about the project's use of Dublin Core.

 


Cataloging Policies


The cataloging policies of the PAIR database resources conform to the standards defined by Dublin Core. Definitions and notes about specific PAIR fields and data include:

Title. Main title as it appears on the resource. Prefer a title in English to titles in other languages.

Other Title. Title(s) in other languages, variation(s) of the main title as they appear on the resource, and Romanized form of titles.

Creator. Person(s) or organization(s) most responsible for the intellectual content of the resource such as author, compiler, or editor. Names are spelled and formatted in accordance with Library of Congress Authority Headings. This field may have a more specific label such as 'Author' or 'Editor.'

Contributor. Person(s) or organization(s) directly or indirectly associated with the resource such as a parent agency, or a cooperating entity. Names are spelled and formatted in accordance with Library of Congress Authority Headings.

Country/Region. Countries and/or regions addressed by the resource. Here is a list of countries and regions with resources in the PAIR database.

Publisher. Place of publication (if known) followed by name of publisher(s) as it appears on the resource. Publisher information in Asian scripts is also Romanized.

Description. PAIR catalogers' prose summary of the information found in the resource.

Subjects. Library of Congress Subject Headings that reflect the intellectual content of the resource. Headings are constructed according to the emerging Faceted Application of Subject Authority (FAST) schema.

Language. Primary language(s) of the resource. Language names are in accordance with the list of language codes for MARC 21 by Library of Congress. Here is a list of languages utilized within the PAIR catalog.

Type. Primary form of the information in the resource. All PAIR records are 'Text.'

URL. World Wide Web address(es) of the homepage or relevant section of the resource.

IsPartOf. Terms from a controlled list of broad topical subjects developed by PAIR catalogers that reflect the range of issues covered by PAIR resources. This also may include series titles spelled and formatted in accordance with Library of Congress Authority Headings.

Submitter. Collaborating institution responsible for selecting and cataloging the resource.

Note. Technical and miscellaneous information about the record or resource, such as date the record was created (cataloged).

Local Identifier. Unique record number automatically generated at record creation.

 


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The PAIR Project is supported by the U.S. Department of Education program “Technological
Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access
” authorized under Title VI (Sec. 606)
Part A of the Higher Education Act. ©2005

Copyright © 2005 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.

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