Working at Tateuchi EAL in 2020: A Student Employee’s Perspective

Chun Li

The authorChun Li

Working at the Tateuchi East Asia Library as a student cataloging specialist is one of my proudest achievements at UW. I still remember how excited I felt when I was officially hired in January 2020. As one of the very few international students in my Master of Library and Information Science program, I was eager to find out more about the American library system. My work as a library assistant has complemented my coursework and allowed me to put into practice theoretical knowledge in areas such as metadata and information organization. My Tateuchi EAL job has empowered me to move from surviving to thriving, and helped clarify my goal of becoming a librarian.

My first assignment has been to work on the project “Discover Republican China—Cataloging Hidden Treasures of 20th Century Chinese Publications,” which will make previously uncataloged Chinese materials fully accessible through UW Libraries Search. My tasks have included searching thousands of titles and doing copy cataloging. Many items are dusty and fragile, and their very presence in the UW collection seems quite miraculous, considering they have travelled to America with generations of Chinese immigrants and in some cases withstood war and turmoil.

The backlog collection covers diverse subjects, from an early twentieth century train timetable, to an old Shanghainese fashion magazine, to an elementary school textbook. Perusing them provides a glimpse into history and its individual actors. Most books I processed have outlived their publishers and are rare or unique in US collections.

I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to catalog and reorganize these decades-old hidden treasures from my homeland, and honored to help realize their historical value by making them discoverable to scholars worldwide. Not only has the project offered me professional experience in a research library, it has given me a new understanding of my culture.

2020 was anything but normal, creating all kinds of difficulties for an academic library like ours. But we have met the challenge together. After working remotely for months, I can now do some work onsite, and have begun processing the new books that have piled up during the pandemic. Though we don’t know when things will return to normal, I am looking forward to working again with my amazing colleagues.