This article introduces the Chinese and Oriental Languages Computer Society (COLCS) to those who wish to know something about this Society. It also provides information to those who wish to make inquiry or apply for membership as well as to those who wish to purchase the conference proceedings or subscribe to the Journal.

Twenty years ago, this Society was formed at the founding conference on June 9, 1976, in New York City during the National Computer Conference. There were 41 participants. A delegation came from Taiwan: this support made the conference successful since Taiwan was the largest user of computer processing of Chinese language at that time. Many founding members are still members today, and this made it possible for the society to reach its first 20 years.

The latest edition of the Constitution and Bylaws was the one amended on April, 1992. As stated in the Constitution, the Society shall be scientific, technical, and educational. Its purposes are (1) to advance the science and technology of information processing in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other oriental languages that are similar in the use of a large character set; (2) to promote the free exchange of information about computer processing of these natural languages in the best professional tradition.

The Society is administered by the Governing Board, President, Vice-President, Treasurer and Secretary, in addition to Committee Chairs and Regional Directors. There are five past presidents: Yaohan Chu, Tien-Chi Chen, King-Sun Fu, Wellington C. P. Yu, and Ching Y. Suen. The Society is incorporated in the state of Maryland (certificate No. 6668 on Jan. 7, 1983). The Society is granted an exempt status by the US Internal Revenue Service (EIN: 52-1325034 on May 2, 1984).

The Society holds international conferences on computer processing of oriental languages about every 12 to 24 months. There have been 16 international conferences which were held at New York, Washington DC, Chicago, San Francisco, Florida, Honolulu, Toronto, Tokyo, Taejon (Korea), Taipei, Hong Kong, Singapore and Chang Sha (China). In addition to the usual technical sessions and conference proceedings, some conferences offered exhibitions, tutorial notes, and special issues.

The last International Conference was a special one, the Twenty Year Anniversary Conference. It was jointly sponsored by Knowledge Systems Institute of the USA and the Institute of Information Sciences, Academia Sinica, of Taiwan. The conference was held in Honolulu during Nov. 23-25, 1995. Shu-Kuo Chang of the University of Pittsburgh was the General Chair. Keh-Jiann Chen of Academia Sinica of Taiwan and Kazuo Sugihara of the University of Hawaii at Manoa were the Program Chairs. There were 56 papers on various aspects of oriental languages processing including 32 regular papers and 24 short papers. There were 346 pages in the Proceedings.

The Society publishes a Newsletter, Journal, conference proceedings, tutorial notes, and special issues. The Newsletter is published irregularly. The Journal, "the Computer Processing of Chinese and Oriental languages", which was founded by Dr. C Y Suen of Concordia University of Canada, began its appearance in 1983. It currently publishes two issues per year. The current Editor-in-Chief of the Journal is Dr. Hsi-Jian Lee of National Chiao-Tung University of Taiwan. Conference proceedings were published in every international conference. A special issue on "Chinese/Kanji Text and Data Processing" was published as the January 1985 issue of IEEE Computer Magazine.

There are about 150 currently paid members in the USA China, Canada , Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and other regions. Most members are located in the USA. Many are life members. The current Chair of the Membership Committee is Dr. Keh-Jiann Chen of Academia Sinica of Taiwan.