Developments and Plans

Developments and Plans Cornell Library Under the stimulus of being selected as the CHINOPERLrepository the Cornell University Library has increased its efforts to acquire material of interest to our Conference. The 232 reels of microfilm which make up the Chung-kuo ti-fang su-ch'CT, an extensive collection of popular and folk materials , have been shipped from Taiwan and should be in hand by the time you read this. During the past month more than a hundred more volumes have been added to the several hundred works in the Cornell holdings of mu-ya ,i!/t and other folk song categories. It is hoped that, with the help of our readers , we can soon report the beginnings of the CHINOPERLcollections of tapes, records, videotapes, and films. We anticipate some return in these categories as a by-product of one or two projects going into the field in 1969-70. The Spring (1969) Meeting of the American Council of Learned Societies The ACLS Committee on Studies of Chinese Civilization met last spring and, according to our informant, was "impressed by the possibilities raised at that meeting (i.e., CHINOPERLConference at Cornell) for really constructive development of a neglected field." Professor Cyril Birch went to bat for us and presented a CHINOPERLplan for administering support in the forms of: 1. supplementary grants to enable scholars visiting Hong Kong or Taiwan to collect materials; 2. summer research grants to enable scholars to visit Cornell to work in the Archive; 3. possibly a graduate fellowship, awarded annually to allow an advanced student to work with the Archive or on tasks related to it; 4. costs of an annual meeting of the Conference; 5. equipment for workers in the field; 6. acquisitions for the Archive, with a suggestion that unspent sums in ,,ny other category could go into acquisitions. These are essentially the core problems discussed at the Cornell meeting. A conservative but still quite workable estimate would call for about $10,000 per year for a five-year period to get such a program under way. The ACLS cannot support such activities from its own funds and we did not expect to get such monies from them. However, the ACLS Committee agreed, with certain stipulations, to help us in submitting formal applications 23 for support to other appropriate sources. The stipulations were quite reasonable and essentially requested that we show by our next CIUNOPERL meeting that we are still willing and able to make this whole thing work. The Committee has agreed to support our next meeting sometime in the spring of 1970 and would like to see two general conditions fulfilled. First, they request that we combine our business meeting with a program concerned with oral and performing literature and that this more substantive part of the meetings include papers with a view toward pub~ lication. Secondly, the Committee urges that the business sessions include some firm and practical plans for funding from foundation or other sources. The second part of these stipulations is a matter which all of us will have to consider carefully between now and the next meeting. We would appreciate hearing any ideas the readers have on this most important subject. We do not have any money now but we do have an important friend at court. The next move is up to us. The first stipulation has. been met most admirably by Professor Crump, who was in the act of planning a conference on the "State of the Art in Traditional Chinese TI1eater. 11 This was obviously well within the purview of CHINOPERL interests and a joint meeting seemed to be the perfect solution to a number of problems. As of the moment, we are planning to combine Professor Grump's conference and our own CHINOPERL meetings next spring. Professor Crump' s preliminary plans call for a conference of experts of both the academic and the performing type. It sounds very likely that we will be able to get recordings ,md films out of this kind of combination . And even for those who are not directly involved in drama, this joint operation should produce something of interest. We hope that it will set the pattern for future...