TKU main library hosted the 2007 annual meeting of DDC (Digital Dissertation Consortium) at the end of last month, during which the future of digital theses database was discussed. The consortium was established in 2001 in order to serve higher education and research institutes in Taiwan.

The meeting was co-organized by the library of National Taiwan University, Pro-Quest, an American digital database developer, and its Taiwanese distributor, Transmission Books and Mirocinfo Company. Participants exceeding 100 scholars, technicians and librarians, with some coming from Hong Kong, attended this one-day conference, examining the recent developments of digital databases in Europe, Northern America, and Chinese-speaking regions. It also aimed to find solutions for better applications of these databases so as to maximize their use. In particular, the database that was under the microscope of this meeting was PQDT (Pro-Quest Digital These) which was jointly developed by Pro-Quest and Academia Sinica. Currently, the database of AS contains approx 81,000 copies of these from Northern America that are available for downloads. ( ~Ying-hsueh Hu )