Cooperative Korean Collection Development in North America

This blog post was written by Miree Ku, Korean Studies Librarian, Duke University Libraries

On 14 March 2025, at the upcoming meeting of the AAS (Association for Asian Studies)/ CEAL (Council on East Asian Libraries) (AAS) Conference, the Korean Collections Consortium of North America (KCCNA) will host a special session to celebrate its 30th anniversary. I have been invited to present a talk at this special session, which is devoted to the theme of “Shaping the Future of Korean Studies: Korean Collections Consortium of North America (KCCNA)’s Collaborative Vision.” Below are some preliminary thoughts on select subject resources collected through the KCCNA Program and their significance and utilization in Duke University’s Korean Studies Programs.

A Brief History of the KCCNA

The Korean Collections Consortium of North America (KCCNA) was established in 1994 with six founding members: University of California at Berkeley; Columbia University; Harvard University; University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa; University of Southern California; and University of Washington. These institutions cooperatively developed and shared their research collections to support Korean Studies scholars and students across North America. Later, additional institutions joined the consortium, including the University of Chicago, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Toronto, University of Michigan, Princeton University, Yale University, and Duke University, which is the only library in the southeastern United States that offers an in-depth Korean collection curated by a Korean Studies librarian.

The primary purpose of this national consortium is to coordinate collection development efforts among top Korean Studies libraries, expanding beyond traditional core subjects such as language, literature, and history while ensuring broad access to these resources. Serving as hub libraries in North America, KCCNA members aim to benefit the entire Korean Studies community, not just their own institutions. To meet the growing and increasingly diverse demands of the Korean Studies field, each member library has been assigned specialized, non-core subject areas to focus on. This approach ensures comprehensive subject coverage while minimizing duplication across member collections. It is a cooperative model that strives to serve the Korean community of scholars as best as possible, one might say it is an example of collections as a service.

While the KCCNA Grant plays the biggest role in cooperative collection development in the U.S., no discussion of this topic is complete with at least a brief mention of the Korean group of the IVY Plus Libraries Confederation (IPLC) Korean Studies librarians from the University of Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale communicate and collaborate on best practices and information sharing, particularly in the cooperative purchasing of e-books for more effective negotiation and pricing. They also share information on selecting and purchasing large collections through a system where one or two libraries acquire a major collection, allowing other libraries to access it via BorrowDirect, IPLC’s expedited interlibrary loan service.

Cooperative Korean Collection Development at Duke University

Even before joining KCCNA as its 13th member, in 2012, Duke University Libraries (DUL) had demonstrated its commitment to providing the highest quality support for Korean Studies at Duke. In 2007, the library hired me as Duke’s first subject librarian dedicated to building the Korean collection and providing research consultations and instructional services for its users. Starting with a small initial budget, I have sought to strengthen Duke’s holdings on Korea, primary subject areas such as language, literature, history, and film. The task of building a comprehensive collection of research materials has benefited greatly from the support of the Korea Foundation, which has given DUL $244,000 over the course of 14 years ($20,000 per year for five years, $18,000 per year for the following three years, and $15,000 per year thereafter).

By the time Duke University joined the KCCNA, major topics had already been assigned to each member library, making it quite difficult to introduce new subjects. Although some specialized topics could slightly overlap due to geographical considerations, the original goal was to collect materials in subject areas that other member libraries were not covering. Therefore, this objective had to be carefully considered in the selection process.

Duke’s major collection areas include film studies, Buddhism, cultural studies, and the Korean language, which are highly sought after by our faculty, researchers, and students for their research and teaching. However, ethics and Korean cuisine were somewhat unconventional topics at the time when I had to select designated subjects as a member of KCCNA. These subjects had not previously been considered for research and teaching purposes. Nevertheless, we were expected to choose collection areas that other university libraries had not prioritized. After careful consideration, I decided to add ethics and Korean cuisine to our collection, alongside film studies, Buddhism, cultural studies, and applied linguistics.

The importance of ethics—a broad academic field that spans multiple disciplines, including philosophy and theoretical ethics, business and corporate ethics, medical and bioethics, environmental ethics, media and technology ethics, and legal and human rights – was recognized in Duke University Libraries’ new collection development strategy, which was announced in February 2025. According to this strategy, Duke’s most identified areas of emphasis include climate studies, ethics, bioethics, technology ethics, science and society ethics, and global and environmental health, particularly from an interdisciplinary perspective. Thanks to the KCCNA grant, I have been able to collect a diverse range of books related to ethics, which directly support Duke’s current research priorities.

Similar consideration led me to select cookbooks as a KCCNA designated subject. Duke University actively collects books on cuisine and culture, recognizing their importance in both research and education. This includes not only cookbooks but also works on history, culture, daily life, and language as they relate to Korean cuisine.

Cookbooks can serve as a valuable niche collection in academic libraries, supporting interdisciplinary research in history, anthropology, sociology, science, and even medicine. While such books are commonly associated with home kitchens, their academic value lies in their ability to document cultural heritage, food science, and social change, not just recipes and cooking techniques. They serve as essential resources for interdisciplinary research, offering insights into history, culture, sociology, anthropology, economics, and science. For Interdisciplinary Research, culinary books intersect with anthropology, history, and science, making them valuable for multiple disciplines. In terms of cultural preservation, many traditional recipes are oral histories that, when documented, help preserve heritage. Understanding food chemistry and nutrition is crucial for public health research. Considering economic and social studies, examining the food industry, agricultural policies, and ethical consumption patterns contributes to broader social discussions.

One of the key challenges in developing this collection is balancing popular cookbooks with scholarly works to ensure both accessibility and academic depth. As with other niche collections built with KCCNA funds, the goal is to make sure that cookbooks enhance students’ understanding of Korea’s history, society, and traditions. The fact that these cookbooks—such as Heo Young-man’s Sikgaek (Gourmet)— are now being used in an advanced Korean language class (Korean 305) demonstrates the successful link between national cooperative collection development and Korean coursework at Duke.