2006 CEAL Conference

Committee on Japanese Materials (CJM)

 

San Francisco Marriott

San Francisco, CA

 

April 6, 2006, 1:50-3:40

 

MINUTES

 

INTRODUCTION TO THE COMMITTEE MEMBERS

 

Ms. Keiko Yokota-Carter, Chair of the CJM, welcomed the participants and introduced the members of the committee.  They are:

Tokiko Y. Bazzell, University of Hawaii
Antony Boussemart, Exole francaise d'Extreme-Orient bibliotheque
Ito Eichi, Library of Congress
Tomoko Goto, University of British Columbia
Haruko Nakamura, Yale University
Ikuo Sasakawa, University of Tokyo
Kenneth Kazuo Tanaka, University of Maryland

Ms. Yokota-Carter also introduced the members of the Subcommittee on Japanese Rare Books.  They are:

Toshie Marra, University of California, Los Angeles (Chair)

Hideyuki Morimoto, Columbia University

Tomoko Goto, University of British Columbia

 

Ms. Toshie Marra reported on the Subcommittee on Japanese Rare Books.

* Ms. Hisako Rogerson, Library of Congress, will be also a subcommittee member.

* No formal charges yet have been working.

* Directory of North American Collections of Old and Rare Japanese
Books, Other Print Materials, and Manuscripts published in JEAL (no. 131, Oct. 2003) is outdated and will be updated.

* Descriptive Cataloging Guidelines for Pre-Meiji Japanese Books will be available on the CJM web site next week.  Mr. Isamu Tsuchitani, Library of Congress, started this project in 2001.  He retired on January 4, 2006 after working at LC over 44 years.  Then, Ms. Reiko Yoshimura, Freer Gallery of Art/Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, joined the subcommittee.  Ms. Manae Fujishiro, Library of Congress, and Ms. Hisako Rogerson, Library of Congress, have been cataloging over 54,000 Japanese rare books, resulting 400 more titles to go.  The guidelines have been presented to Cataloging Policy & Support Office, Library of Congress (CPSO).

 

Ms. Yokota-Carter introduced the following members:

* Retired Members from the Library of Congress:

Mr. Isamu Tsuchitani, Leader of Japanese Cataloging Team

Ms. Manae Fujishiro and Ms. Kimiko Devadas, catalogers

Mr. Takeo Nishioka, reference librarian of Japanese collection

 

* Member Who Passed-Away:

Ms. Nobuko Pourzadeh-Boushehri
Japanese collection manager of Florida Smathers Libraries.
  Retired in 2003, and passed away in 2005

* New Members:

Mr. Hiroyuki Good, Japanese bibliographer, University of Pittsburgh

Ms. Hikaru Nakano, East Asian cataloger, Asian studies bibliographer in Japanese materials, University of Florida

 

 

NICHIBUNKEN's Collaboration with the Library of Congress : Digitization and Cataloguing of the Ukiyoe Collection at Prints & Photographs (P & P) Division, LC by Prof. Atsushi Aiba, Director of Library and Research Information Department, International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto (Nichibunken)

 

Prof. Aiba introduced the home page of the Nichibunken Databases:  <http://www.nichibun.ac.jp/graphicversion/dbase/database_e.html>

He then talked about the process of collaboration with the P & P Division, LC for the digitization of the ukiyoe prints the Division has.  The Division has more than 2,700 woodblock prints and drawings by Japanese artists created between the seventeenth and the early twentieth centuries.  Some works are done by famous artists, such as Hiroshige, Kuniyoshi and Sadahide.  Nichibunken financially supported the cataloging and the scanning of 1,100 ukiyoe prints which are included in the LC's web site titled: The Floating World of Ukiyoe < http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/ukiyo-e/>.  The site includes about 2,000 ukiyoe.  It took from March 2001 to January 2005 to work out negotiating and planning of digitization.  Actual scanning of 1,100 ukiyoe started in July 2004.  Both Nichibunken and the LC plan to make a site of the Japanese prints public on their own web sites.

 

Prof. Aiba displayed the catalog which includes authors/creators, titles and series titles in Japanese, Romanization of authors'/creator's names, and Romanization and English translation of the titles and the series titles.  The detailed description of each entry includes all of above in addition to thumbnail image, call number, date of creation, medium and notes.  Nikkei Shinbun reported on this project on October 21, 2005 with a headline "Bei toshokan ni maboroshi no ukiyoe" 米図書館に幻の浮世絵.

 

 

PANEL DISCUSSION : INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION ON THE USE OF JAPANESE DIGITAL RESOURCES

 

1.  Digital Resources on Japan in European Universities : A Survey by Antony Boussemart, EPEO

 

Although there are 349 universities, research institutions and libraries, and 85 museums in Europe, not many Japanese language online resources are used.   Three institutions use GeNII and four use Nikkei Telecom 21.  As for English online resources, Bibliography of Asian Studies, EbscoHost, JSTOR, LexisNexis, MLA Bibliography, Periodical Archive Online, and Project Muse are used.

 

There are several issues for Japanese online resources not being used by more institutions. 

1.  They are too expensive.  Consortium might be a solution.

2.  Technical support and latest equipment are not available.   Some places still use Windows 95.

3.  Public libraries simply use Google and administrators say that everything is available on Google.

4.  The number of Japanese studies students is getting smaller.  By the time the students reach 3rd or 4th year college, they have dropped out from the program.

 

2.  Ms. Ellen Hammond, Curator, East Asian Library, Yale University

 

Ms. Hammond talked about issues on Japanese electronic resources.  Ever since she had started as Japanese librarian, she has been struggling over many issues.  She summarized what kind of issues we have and the present status of dealing with Japanese electronic resources.

* Digital Resources Committee of The North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources (NCC) and Japanese Materials Committee (JMC) are working on issues of licensing and they are doing a good job by enunciating all the issues and putting them on the web.

*  Creating consortium is good for breaking on price.  Examples: Yomiuri and JapanKnowledge.

* Negotiating with Japanese newspaper companies is frustrating.

* Marketing in Japan is changing.  They want to work with us, which is good.

* Korean consortium is small but successful in negotiating with Korean vendors.

* It is easier for a group to negotiate with a vendor rather than for an individual institution to do so with a vendor.

* There are many Chinese digital resources but not Japanese.

* Chinese libraries, vendors, East Asian libraries in North America had meetings to bring Chinese database vendors together and to internationalize.  Chinese language contract is to be understood by people here.

* OCLC is also interested in working with Japanese electronic database vendors, such as NII.

* East View – Specializing in Chinese, but may also interested in Japanese databases.

* Chinese database vendors opened their branches in North America.  However, the price is higher than the one in China.

* Licensing is frustrating.

* We need to share information, e.g. how they put licensing.

* Licensing is not the only issue.  There are copyright issues, as well.

 

3.  Digital Resources in Japanese Universities: Current Perspective by Mr. Osamu Inoue, Tokyo Institute of Technology Library 

 

Mr. Inoue gave a PowerPoint presentation on digital resources in Japanese universities. 

Since 1995, MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) has been supporting 6 national university libraries which are “advanced electronic library project participants” in order to enhance their functions for electronic library.  Main issue is gathering and disseminating academic information that was produced within the universities.  In 2001, MEXT also provided with fund to 10 more national university libraries for their electronic library project.  As of January 2006, there are 87 national university participants.  One of the major digital resources in national universities is Dai Nihon Shiryo 大日本史料.

 

One of the current operations is NDL Database Navigation Service (Dnavi: http://dnavi.ndl.go.jp/), which provides public with gateway services to Japanese databases on the web.  The size of deep web is estimated 550 times larger than the surface web.  Dnavi makes these vast information resources more accessible.  Mr. Inoue also provided statistics on creators and resource types of the databases as of March 20, 2006.  According to that, OPAC is the largest database (878) including both national and private universities.

 

Another current project is NII Metadata Database Collaborative Constructing Project involves 6 national universities.  These universities are testing implementation software of institutional repository.  Institutional repository is recognized as a university’s backbone for disseminating its educational and research outputs.  In 2005, NII started “Cyber Science Infrastructure (CSI)” in order to create scholarly digital contents and institutional repository in cooperation with university libraries.  Now 19 major universities are supported by NII.  Diagrams of the Institutional repository plans of Tokyo University and Tokyo Kogyo Daigaku (Tokyo TecSTAR)  were shown.

 

 

4.  List of Databases & Electronic Resources Available at the University of Tokyo : On Japanese Materials in Social Sciences/Arts & Humanities by Mr. Ikuo Sasakawa

 

Mr. Sasakawa reported that the national universities are in the creation of consortium for Nikkei BP Kiji Kensaku Sabisu 日経BP記事検索サービス, Asahi Shinbun Online Database “Kikuzo” 朝日新聞オンライン記事データベース「聞蔵」, Yomiuri Shinbun Online Database “Yomidas” 読売新聞記事データベース「ヨミダス」, Web OYA-Bunko 大宅壮一文庫雑誌記事索引検索Web, and Oya Soichi Library Collection of Magazine Inaugural Issues 大宅壮一文庫創刊号コレクション.  They want to share the consortium with North American libraries.  He also reported on other databases that Tokyo University subscribes.

 

5.  Update of Japanese Digital Resources by Mr. Daikichi Mitake, Kinokuniya Bookstores

 

Mr. Mitake reported on circulation of major Japanese literary magazines: Gunzo, Shincho, Subaru, Bungakkai and Bungei.  He then gave statistical information on institutional subscribers of Japanese e-resources in Japan and North America and their types of contracts.  The compared e-resources are: MagazinePlus, JapanKnowledge, YOMIDAS, Web OYA-bunko and CiNii, being CiNii the most common in Japan and MagazinePlus in North America.

 

 In terms of types of contracts in North America, institutional subscribers usually need more than original English agreement and need to create addendum or even addendum plus.  An example is JapanKnowledge.  However, among seven Japanese online databases, which include Nichigai/Web Services, JapanKnowledge, YOMIDAS, JITSU, CiNii, D1-Law Com, Kikuzo II Bijuaru, some do not have English agreement, English addendum and/or English guidebook. 

 

North American institutions are also interested in making consortium.  NERL Consortium for YOMIURI CD-Roms includes Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, U. of Pennsylvania, Duke and Yale.  GWLA Consortium for JapanKnowledge includes Hawaii, USC, Arizona, BYU, Kansas, Washington and  Washington in St. Louis in one group and Arizona State U. and U. of Texas Austin in the other depending on agreement type.

 

Question and Answer Session

 

Questions to Mr. Mitake:

  1. “Institutional Subscribers of Popular Japanese E-Resources” was useful.  Why the number of foreign subscribers is small?  No market abroad?
  1. Many Japanese publishers focus on Japanese users.  American way of contract is not popular in Japan.  Too much work, e.g. Asahi.
  1. Where did you get the numbers of the subscribers?

A.  From the publishers.

Question to Mr. Boussemar:

Q.    Europe has LexisNexis.  Here there is Factiva.  Is this a solution?

A.     What is the market for Japanese digital resources in Europe?  Factiva includes Japanese resources but the European buyers do not recognize that it is good.  European figures look dark.  However, Asian studies are growing and students and people are more interested in Asia.                               

Question to Ms. Hammond

  1. Which aggregator do you recommend?

A.     Some aggregators have relation to Japanese libraries.  Be careful and realistic when we work with vendors of Japanese digital resources.

Question to Mr. Inoue

Q.    Copyright issues of NII kiyo 紀要.  Please explain about institutional depository.

A.     It is a challenge to get permission from the authors.

Participant’s comment: Kiyo紀要will be replaced by institutional repository in future.

Participant’s comment: There are 575 Japanese subscribers to CiNii in Japan whereas in North America there are only 2.

A.     NII made CiNii include many full-text science materials.  In the future, there will be more humanities full-text articles.

Question to Mr. Miyazawa

  1. GeNii has Ph.D. dissertation database.  Will this be institutional depository?

A.     Dissertation will be institutional depository.  Until now, it is not important in Japan.  They were mostly published in journals.  Mr. Miyazawa does not know why.  However, it is becoming important.  They now think dissertations should be published.

Question to Mr. Inoue

  1. The same question as above.

A.     Ph.D. dissertation should be included.  10,000 dissertations are already in institutional depository with authors’ permission.

Questions to Mr. Inoue and Mr. Sasakawa

      Q.  2 questions re. Negotiating with Japanese vendors:

    1. Do you have site license access?  Is access from home possible?
    2. Downloading article or email it to ourselves.  Do you include these when you negotiate with vendors?

A.     Downloading is included.  However, accessing from home is not because of authentication issue.  It is not important.
Tokyo Kogyo Daigaku: Professors can use English journals from home, but not Japanese journals.
Tokyo Daigaku: No access from off campus.

Question to Mr. Sasakawa

  1. Do visiting scholars and guests have access to databases?
  1. They are walk-in users and they do have access to the databases.

Question to the panelists

  1. What kind of software do you use, SBN  or VPN?  What does Tokyo Daigaku use for authentication?
  1. (They do not know.)

 

The Committee meeting ended at 3:55 p.m.