Charlene Chou, Wider Community Engagement Officer
Charlene Chou is Head of the Knowledge Access Department at New York University Libraries, where she oversees cataloguing and metadata services. She actively contributes to the profession through service on numerous committees, including the RDA Steering Committee, the PCC (Program for Cooperative Cataloging) Policy Committee, the BIBFRAME Interoperability Group, the OCLC RLP Metadata Managers Group, the Joint RDA Board and RSC Working Group on Artificial Intelligence, and the PCC Task Group on AI and Machine Learning for Cataloging and Metadata, serving as the liaison between the two AI groups. As WCEO, she serves ex officio on the RSC Technical Working Group and represents the RSC at the MARC Advisory Committee meetings.
Charlene has led several outreach initiatives, delivering presentations on RDA updates, linked data, and AI at major research institutions and associations worldwide, including the Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL) in the U.S., the National Central Library in Taiwan, the Shanghai Library in China, the JULAC Bibliographic Services Committee in Hong Kong, and the Latin American Cataloging and Metadata Meeting. She engaged stakeholders to complete the Simplified Chinese translation of the RDA Reference by May 2024, initiated the Traditional Chinese translation, and launched the Korean translation in collaboration with the National Library of Korea (NLK). In addition, she introduced strategic tracking measures by creating and maintaining an outreach spreadsheet to monitor progress, track activities, and plan long-term outreach goals holistically. More recently, she engaged stakeholders to translate the RDA Teaching & Training Tips into both Traditional and Simplified Chinese.
Dedicated to advancing innovation, Charlene leads pilot projects exploring emerging technologies and trends. Her research interests include metadata management, discovery of multilingual resources, natural language processing (NLP) for subject indexing and semantic search, digital scholarship, authority control, linked data, and inclusive metadata practices.
News Items About Charlene
- 4 January 2024: Charlene Chou Begins Second Term as Wider Community Engagement Officer
- 30 January 2021: Wider Community Engagement Officer Appointed
Presentations by Charlene
| Presentation Date | Title | Presenter / Author | Sponsor / Venue | Notes |
| 1 October 2025 | Charlene Chou | XIV Encuentro Latinoamericano de Catalogación y Metadatos 2025 [Latin American Cataloging and Metadata Meeting 2025] | Slides in Spanish. Title in English: Considering AI in the Growth of RDA: Joint RDA Board and RSC Working Group on Artificial Intelligence report, 2024-Sept. 2025 | |
| 30 June 2025 | Considering AI in the Growth of RDA: Joint RDA Board and RSC Working Group on Artificial Intelligence Report, 2024 - June 2025 | Charlene Chou | RDA Linked Data Forum, ALA Annual Meeting | |
| 17 July 2024 | RDA Update | Charlene Chou | Shanghai Library | |
| 15 December 2023 | Introduction to Official RDA Toolkit | Charlene Chou | Bibliographic Services Committee, Joint University Libraries Advisory Committee, Hong Kong | |
| 27 October 2023 | RDA Plus | Charlene Chou | National Central Library Taiwan RDA Training | Also available on the NCL website |
| 13 March 2023 | RDA Updates, March 2022-March 2023 | Charlene Chou | CEAL (Council on East Asian Libraries) Cataloging Workshop | Also available on the CEAL Cataloging Workshop event page. |
| 23 September 2022 | RDA Updates | Charlene Chou | National Central Library, Taiwan RDA Webinar Series | |
| 18 March 2022 | RDA Updates, March 2021-March 2022 | Charlene Chou | Council on East Asian Libraries Annual Meeting, Committee on Technical Processing |
Page updated: 10 October 2025.