Assessing Repetitive Work When Processing Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Materials

Abstract This article looks at the repetitive tasks faced by East Asian Studies Librarians and considers how to automate them. By confirming the most repetitive tasks in East Asian Librarianship, the author, who is a selector for Japanese language materials, identified checking donations and user requests against library holdings as a task that was highly repetitive and automatable. The article explains the factors for assessing how to automate checking for duplicates. The basics of creating a script with the automation tool AutoHotKey are introduced and demonstrate how to create a basic macro. Finally, the macro for duplicate checking is assessed for efficiency, accuracy, and unanticipated benefits/challenges for using macros.