Vinh-The Lam, MLS
Librarian Emeritus
University of Saskatchewan
CANADA
During the 1970s, in South Vietnam, there was a popular
saying “Nhứt Thắng, Nhì Chinh, Tam Thanh, Tứ Trưởng = First Thắng, Second
Chinh, Third Thanh, Fourth Trưởng,” which revealed the
admiration of the people toward these four honest and incorruptible generals of
the ARVN in a country where the corruption has become something commonplace
among the political and military leaders.
Vinh-The Lam, M.L.S.
Librarian Emeritus
University of Saskatchewan
CANADA
It is safe to say that the Americans, not the
Vietnamese, that have produced the most writings about the Vietnam War. The volume of documents written in English by
the Americans on the Vietnam War is monumental.
The contributions by the Vietnamese authors were quite modest. Today, the American authors are divided
clearly into two schools of thought: 1) The majority belongs to the “orthodox”
school; and, 2) The minority belongs to the “revisionist” school. In general terms, their positions are totally
opposite: for the “orthodox” authors, “the Vietnam War was an unwinnable
war” while the “revisionist” authors believe that the Vietnam War could
have been won and at a much lower cost had the U.S employed a more appropriate
strategy. This Chapter is an effort to
understand, analyze, and evaluate that judgment by the “orthodox” authors that “the
Vietnam War was an unwinnable war.”
Vinh-The Lam, M.L.S.
Librarian Emeritus
University of Saskatchewan
CANADA
The
Vietnam War (1954-1975) has been the topic of an incredibly voluminous
literature for the past five decades. These
documents have touched on all political, military, economic and social aspects
of the war with the most important ones being the studies to reassess the cause,
merit, and conduct of the war. American
historians and researchers, including the political and military people who had
been involved in the war, were trying to understand why America has lost the
war in spite of its huge amount of efforts and money spent on it. For the first thirty years, a large majority
of researchers have reached the conclusion that the United States have lost the
war mainly because of the two following reasons:
·
The
U.S. involvement was a mistake for various reasons, one of them was the wrong
taking of side in the war: its ally, the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) did not
deserve to be supported; its army (The Army of the Republic of Vietnam, or
ARVN) was cowardly and totally lacked of fighting capability
· The Vietnam War was “an unwinnable war”
Vinh-The Lam
For
many years, in their conversation about the pre-1975 education in South
Vietnam, especially when referring to high schools, the overseas Vietnamese
people only mentioned the big ones such as Petrus Ký, Gia Long High schools in
Sài Gòn, or Nguyễn Đình Chiểu, Lê Ngọc Hân High Schools in Mỷ Tho, or Phan
Thanh Giản, Đoàn Thị Điểm High Schools in Cần Thơ, or Quốc Học, Đồng Khánh High
Schools in Huế. They almost never
mentioned Thủ Đức Demonstration High School (TDDHS), directly under the jurisdiction
of the Faculty of Pedagogy, University of Sài Gòn (FPUSG), although this school
was opened in 1965, and thus had existed for ten years, and, in fact, had made
important contributions to the Republic of Vietnam’s (RVN) educational system. The author of this article, having worked at
this school for five years (1966-1971), both as Teacher of Social Studies (i.e.,
History & Geography) and Librarian, is trying to introduce the main
features of this school, which caused it to become the symbol of the real
modern educational policy and teaching method of the RVN.
With Guidance from
Lạp Chúc Nguyễn Huy
Edited and translated into English by
Vĩnh Nhơn Lâm Vĩnh Thế
Đông Sơn Bronze Drum
Vinh-The
Lam, M.L.S.
Librarian
Emeritus
University
of Saskatchewan
CANADA
7-12-66.— Dân-biểu Trần Văn Văn bị
hai thanh niên cưỡi Honda bắn tử-thương, hồi 9 giờ sáng nay trước nhà đường
Phan Thanh Giản, Sài Gòn. Một hung thủ bị
bắt.
(Translation:
Deputy Trần Văn Văn was shot dead by two young men riding a Honda at 9 a.m. in
front of his house on Phan Thanh Giản Street, Saigon. One of the assassins was arrested.)
(Source:
Đoàn Thêm. 1966: việc từng ngày
(1966: chronology), p. 220.[1]
The assassination of Mr. Trần Văn
Văn, Deputy of the Constituent Assembly (CA), on December 7, 1966, was an
important political event, causing a lot of debates at that time. The Nguyễn Cao Kỳ government accused the Viet
Cong for this terrorist act and sentenced to death the assassin caught on
spot. The media, even Deputy Trần Văn
Văn’s family, thought that Mr. Văn had been eliminated by the government for
his constant opposition to it. Now,
after more than half a century, based on various sources of documents, this
author is trying to know the truth of this affair.
Vinh-The Lam, M.L.S.
Librarian Emeritus
University of Saskatchewan
CANADA
The
Republic of Vietnam (RVN) was declared dead at noon of April 30, 1975. Every South Vietnamese knew that fact. And they also knew
that the RVN lost the war because it had been abandoned by the U.S. For several years, most South Vietnamese
people hated President Richard M. Nixon and National Security Advisor (and
later Secretary of State) Henry A. Kissinger, believing that they had sold out
the RVN and stabbed it in the back with the Paris Accords signed on January 27,
1973. This writing tries to analyze the abandoning of the RVN by the U.S. and
find out who was to blame.
Vinh-The Lam, M.L.S.
Former President, Vietnamese
Library Association
Former Head, Library Science
Department, Vạn Hạnh University
Librarian Emeritus
University of Saskatchewan
CANADA
This
writing was mostly based on the author’s memory since the official documents
and data regarding the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) are now no longer available or
at best scarcely accessible. However,
and luckily, a sizable number of the Thư Viện Tập San (English
translation: Library Journal), the official organ of the Vietnamese Library
Association (VLA), published before April 30, 1975, is still available, and,
therefore, the author still has some important and useful information regarding
the library development in South Vietnam.
The author sincerely hopes for corrections and updates from the readers.
Vinh-The Lam and Darryl Friesen
(Published in Online, v. 28, no. 4, 2004, p. 31-35)
Abstract:
US Government classified documents generated
during the Vietnam War years are now being declassified and made available for
educational and research purposes. This database includes only those documents
produced by the US Central Intelligence Agency. It provides an in-depth
indexing of the documents’ contents and, when possible, have links to full-text
documents available online at the Website of the Virtual Vietnam Archive. The
database
is designed to offer both simple and advanced
search capabilities.
Keywords:
US Government Declassified Documents -- US Central Intelligence Agency – CIA --
Online Database – Web Database
Vinh-The Lam
(Published in: New Library World, v. 102, no. 1166/1167 (July 2001), pp. 278-282)
There are now national library associations in at least 77 countries in the world, including the following countries from South East Asia: Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand (IFLA directory, 2000). It is, therefore, an anomaly that Vietnam, as a South-East Asian country, does not have a national library association (there was one national library association in South Vietnam, which ceased to exist after the reunification of the country in 1975), especially considering the large number of library and information professionals now working in the country.
David Fox and Vinh-The Lam
(Published in Serials Librarian, v. 43, no. 3, 2003, p. 39-57)
The Canadian National Site
Licensing Project (CNSLP) is a national effort by a consortium of 64 Canadian
university libraries to provide access to full text electronic journals. The first part of this paper describes the
organization, funding structure, and activities, including license
negotiations, of the CNSLP. The second
part of this paper deals with the technical and operational issues related to
electronic journal management. It
describes the process developed at the
Vinh-The Lam
(Published in Cataloging &
classification quarterly, v. 29, no. 3, 2000, p. 49-61)
ABSTRACT
Internet resources have brought great
excitement but also grave concerns to the library world, especially to the
cataloging community. In spite of the various problematic aspects presented by
Internet resources (poorly organized, lack of stability, variable quality),
catalogers have decided that they are worth cataloging, in particular those
meeting library selection criteria. This paper tries to trace the decade-long
history of the library community's efforts in providing an effective way to
catalog Internet resources. Basically, its objective is to answer the following
questions: Why catalog? What to catalog; and, How to catalog. Some issues of
cataloging electronic journals and developments of the Dublin Core Metadata
system are also discussed.
Vinh-The Lam, M.L.S.
Librarian Emeritus
University of Saskatchewan
CANADA
I was a teacher and, naturally, before becoming a teacher, I was also a student like anybody who has gone to school. For me, the appreciativeness of a student toward his/her teacher is one of the most important relationships in one’s life. For the past several years, I have written quite a few articles on that special kind of relationship of Vietnamese students with their teachers.[1, 2, 3] This article is about the same thing but within a different context: I was a Vietnamese student and the teacher was an American. This special teacher-student relationship is profoundly rooted and will last until the last day of our lives.
Vinh-The Lam
In 1936, the poem “Ông
Đồ” (The Master) by poet Vũ Đình Liên, published for the first time on
the periodical Tinh hoa (The Elitist), was an instant success, and has been
enjoyed by several generations of Vietnamese poetry lovers until now. Vũ Đình Liên’s reputation as a poet was forever
solidified by this unique one-hundred-word poem. This article tries to introduce this famous
poem to the generation of English-fluent overseas Vietnamese youth.
Vinh-The
Lam
I made
a trip to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in March 1998. The primary intention was to present a paper
at the NIT '98: 10th International Conference on New Information Technology, to
be held March 24-26, in Hanoi. During
the two months before the conference time I made other commitments with a
number of universities in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. My plan was to leave Saskatoon on March 21st
in order to be in Hanoi in the afternoon of Monday March 23rd.
Vinh-The Lam
Before 1954, a majority of the Vietnamese people had never heard of Canada. And Canada also had no real interest in Southeast Asia in general and in Vietnam in particular. Even toward the end of the Second World War, the decision of the War Committee of the Canadian Cabinet during the Quebec Conference in September 1944 was that "Canadian military forces should participate, as a matter of preference, in the war against Japan in operational theatres of direct interest to Canada as a North American nation, for example in the North and Central Pacific rather than in the more remote areas such as Southeast Asia." 1 “Vietnam, before 1954, was a remote and distant country to Canadians." 2 However, the indifference of Canada toward this region was gradually replaced by a growing interest generated by the political turmoil in the region. "Canadians could not but watch with mounting concern as Southeast Asia progressively acquired all the characteristics of the pre-1914 Balkans - disruptive civil, regional and international rivalries, aggravated by competition between traditional and progressive forces, and among the ideological adherents of nationalism, communism, anti-communism and colonialism." 3 Against this background, the first contact between Canada and Vietnam was made through the role played by Canada as a member of the International Commission for Control and Supervision (ICCS) created by the Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam signed by the warring factions in Geneva, Switzerland on July 20, 1954.
Vinh-The Lam
For
many years, in their conversation about the pre-1975 education in South
Vietnam, especially when referring to high schools, the overseas Vietnamese
people only mentioned the big ones such as Petrus Ký, Gia Long High schools in
Sài Gòn, or Nguyễn Đình Chiểu, Lê Ngọc Hân High Schools in Mỷ Tho, or Phan
Thanh Giản, Đoàn Thị Điểm High Schools in Cần Thơ, or Quốc Học, Đồng Khánh High
Schools in Huế. They almost never
mentioned Thủ Đức Demonstration High School (TDDHS), directly under the jurisdiction
of the Faulty of Pedagogy, University of Sài Gòn (FPUSG), although this school
was opened in 1965, and thus had existed for ten years, and, in fact, had made
important contributions to the Republic of Vietnam’s (RVN) educational system. The author of this article, having worked at
this school for five years (1966-1971), both as Teacher of Social Studies (i.e.,
History & Geography) and Librarian, is trying to introduce the main
features of this school, which caused it to become the symbol of the real
modern educational policy and teaching method of the RVN.
Vinh-The Lam
(Published in Cataloging & classification quarterly, v. 40, no. 1, 2005, p. 101-122)
ABSTRACT
This study
was conducted to investigate the quality control (QC) issues in cataloging
outsourcing programs implemented in US and Canadian academic libraries. Most libraries provided the outsourcing
vendors with detailed cataloging and/or processing specifications before the
outsourcing programs started. They have
set up QC procedures as an integral part of their outsourcing operations. In most cases, both librarian-catalogers and
senior library assistants/technicians were involved in the QC programs. The error rates reported were low and the majority
of bibliographic records provided by the vendors were either LC/OCLC records or
records compatible with the Core-Level Standard recommended by the Cooperative
Cataloging Council’s Task Group on Standards.
A large majority of these libraries were satisfied with the services
provided by the outsourcing vendors. Based
on the definition of quality of cataloging as a combination of Accuracy,
Consistency, Adequacy of Access Points, and Timeliness, most libraries reported
that the quality of their Library’s cataloging was not affected by the
outsourcing programs.
Vinh-The Lam
(Published in Canadian
journal of information science, v. 17, no. 1, 1992, p. 24-31)
Abstract
The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) was created in 1978 to promote the right of Canadians to a safer work-place. CCOHS has developed a computerized information system called CCINFO. As a biblio-graphic database component of CCINFO, CANADIANA provides references to occupational health and safety literature published in Canada, about Canada, or written by Canadian authors. Quality control efforts have been made in database design and record creation procedures for optimal retrieval of accurate and reliable bibliographic information.
Vinh-The Lam
(Published in Cataloging & classification quarterly, v. 32, no. 4, 2001, p. 53-69)
ABSTRACT
Authority
Control (AC) is an important cataloging function aimed at achieving catalog
consistency. It is very time-consuming
and labor-intensive. During the 1990s,
many North American academic libraries, under budgetary constraints, have tried
to outsource AC activities. The
Cataloging Department of the University of Saskatchewan Libraries (USL)
outsourced its AC activities to the Library Technology Inc. (LTI), a United States-based
AC processing vendor. This paper
summarizes the experiences gained by USL in this AC project: the
decision-making process in the selection of LTI; pre- and post-database
clean-up by LTI; and, the current AC activities.