2007 CEAL Conference

Committee on Japanese Materials (CJM)

 

Boston Marriott Copley Square, Salon A-C

Boston, MA

 

March 22, 2007, 8:30 a.m.- 10:20 a.m.

 

MINUTES

 

 

The 2007 annual meeting of the Committee on Japanese Materials (CJM) was called to order at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, 22 March 2007 at Salon A-C, Boston Marriott Copley Square.

 

 

1. Greeting, update and report

Ms. Keiko Yokota-Carter, Chair of the CJM, welcomed the participants and introduced (1) the members of the committee; (2) retired members; (3) new members during the last twelve months; and presented an update of the CJM activities as described below.

 

(1) CJM members

 

  • Ms. Keiko Yokota-Carter (Chair), University of Washington
  • Ms. Tokiko Brazzell, University of Hawaii
  • Mr. Antony Boussemart, Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient
  • Mr. Eiichi Ito, Library of Congress
  • Ms. Tomoko Kakehi, University of British Columbia
  • Ms. Haruko Nakamura, Yale University
  • Mr. Ikuo Sasakawa, University of Tokyo (absent)
  • Mr. Kenneth Kazuo Tanaka, University of Maryland (absent)

 

(2) Retired and new members

 

  • Ms.Yoshiko Gotoh Doherty (National Library of Medicine)

 

(4) New members

 

·        Ms. Tomoko Biolock, Japanese Studies Librarian (University of Southern California)

  • Ms. Yoko Okunishi, Japanese Copy-Cataloger (University of California at Los Angeles
  • Ms. Kiyoyo Pipher, Reference Librarian (Library of Congress)
  • Mr. Kenichiro Shimada, Cataloging Librarian (Gordon W. Prange Collection/Special Collections Cataloging (University of Maryland, College Park)

 

(4) Report from Chair

 

Ms. Yokoto-Carter reported on an ad-hoc meeting on Japanese digital resources in the US which took place at the University of Tokyo on September 1, 2006, and which was co-sponsored by the Japan Association of National University Libraries (JANUL), the North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources (NCC) and CJM. At that meeting, issues related to the subscription of digital products and databases by the North American academic institutions were discussed with representatives from the three major Japanese newspaper companies, Asahi, Nikkei and Yomiuri Shinbun.

 

Later, Ms. Yokota-Carter added that a detailed report on this Tōdai ad-hoc meeting would be presented at the 2007 open meeting of the North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources on March 24, 2007 at Tsai Auditorium of Harvard Center for Government and International Studies.

 

At the present meeting, Ms. Yokota-Carter introduced representatives from Japanese newspaper companies, Ms. Aoki from Asahi Shinbun, Mr. Nishimura and Ms. Mori from Nikkei America. It was also mentioned that the Tōdai ad-hoc meeting was a result of Mr. Sasakawa’s effort to assist and work with the North American libraries and librarians to improve their access to Japanese electronic resources.

 

 

2. Report from Europe

 

Mr. Antony Boussemart (Ecole française d’Extrême Orient) reported on the activities of the community of Japanese librarians in Europe over the past twelve months:

 

  • The number of institutions subscribing to Japanese e-resources including databases is increasing.
  • This subscription increase in Europe is a very positive outcome from the CJM 2006 in San Francisco.
  • The possibility of creating a consortium of Japanese librarians and information specialists in Europe with the purpose of contracting together with Japanese vendors is being considered.

 

Mr. Boussemart introduced the PERSEE website at www.persee.fr, which is the website for scientific journals in social and human sciences, established by the Ministry of State Education, Higher Education and Research, the French government, and which includes 15 journals that may contain articles related to Japanese studies. Another 32 journals will be added in the near future.

 

 

3. Q&A on LC Japanese books outsourcing project

 

Mr. Hideyuki Morimoto (Columbia University) presented questions from CJM members regarding a cataloging outsourcing pilot project at the Library of Congress that were collected prior to the CJM meeting.

 

Mr. Philip A Meltzer (Library of Congress, henceforth, LC) responded to those questions which had been sent to him prior to the meeting, by providing a background, brief description, and outcome of the pilot project as in the following.

 

(1) Background

 

Among the eight Japanese catalogers and the Acting Team Leader on the Japanese Cataloging Team for monograph cataloging, six are eligible to retire. The team received and cataloged approximately 5,000 monographic titles over one year. It is unlikely that those positions will be filled once they are vacated. As a result, LC could find itself without sufficient staff to process incoming Japanese material. However, there might be a solution to save cost for LC in processing Japanese material. Indeed, the acquisitions and cataloging staff proposed that the Library conduct an experiment to see whether a Japanese vendor could supply shelf-ready material that met the Library’s selection and cataloging requirements. For example, Casalini, an Italian book vendor for LC, collaborated on a pilot project the objective of which was to provide shelf-ready material for the LC Italian acquisitions in 2004. Mr. Isamu Tsuchitani, Japanese Team Leader (retired) formed a working group including selection officers, acquisition and cataloging staff members, to pursue this pilot project. The group originally contacted two primary vendors of LC in Japan, 1) Japan Publications Trading Company (JPTC) and 2) the Kinokuniya Company. Kinokuniya expressed interest in working with the Library, so the group negotiated the terms of the pilot project with Kinokuniya.

 

(2) Agreement

 

The Library and Kinokuniya made an agreement in May 2006 that Kinokuniya would supply LC with 250 titles according to LC’s selection guidelines, with original (not copy) core level cataloging records for those titles.

 

(3) Selection

 

Kinokuniya was to select material of research value, 100 titles in the humanities, 100 in social sciences (excluding law), and 50 in science and technology, following the highly detailed General Approval Plan Selection Guidelines. Multipart monographs and serials were to be excluded. Kinokuniya made efforts to avoid duplication in the selection of monographs.

 

(4) Cataloging

 

Below is a description of the technical characteristics of the pilot project:

 

  • Standard LC cataloging documentation was to be followed (AACR2, Library of Congress Rule Interpretations, Library of Congress Subject Headings, the Library of Congress Classification Schedule and Subject Cataloging Manual).
  • Full call numbers were to be provided, including complete Cutter numbers (by conducting shelf-list browse of the LC collection via its home page).
  • Kinokuniya did not perform authority work.
  • They agreed to provide access points governed by existing name, series and subject authority records.
  • Kinokuniya agreed to affix Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) labels to title page versos and item barcodes to book covers.
  • Kinokuniya could not create bib records on RLIN because it served as the OCLC representative in Japan. LC automation experts counseled that it would be very time-consuming to create a new work stream for Japanese monograph records created in OCLC. It was decided to copy the records after they migrated to RLIN (which is where LC catalogs its JACKPHY material).

 

(5) Receipt of material and feedback

 

Pilot project material was sent in four large shipments, and arrived at LC between mid-May and the end of June, 2006. LC staff wished to thoroughly ascertain the quality of Kinokuniya’s cataloging, and provide Kinokuniya with as complete a report on their cataloging as possible. Every record was scrutinized carefully, and highly detailed feedback was sent to Kinokuniya.

 

(6) Workflow

 

There was a several-month delay in having the records loaded into RLIN; therefore, each Cutter number had to be checked in LC’s ILS to make sure that it had not been used for another item in the interim. A certain amount of processing still had to be done at LC. LC staff had to perform copy cataloging on all of the records after they had been loaded into RLIN. They had to perform authority control and end-stage processing on LC’s ILS.

 

(7) Results

 

For the most part, Kinokuniya selected material according to LC’s selection guidelines. It should be noted that it usually takes several years to learn how to select material for LC. Kinokuniya has made a good beginning. Reviewers were favorably impressed by the overall quality of Kinokuniya’s cataloging, considering that they had just begun to catalog. Particularly noteworthy was the high quality of descriptive cataloging and word division, and the almost complete absence of typographical errors. A good start was also made on subject cataloging. Acquisitions staff had to handle pilot project material only once, dramatically reducing and streamlining processing time in that unit. Both Kinokuniya and LC staff approached the project as the beginning of a long-term relationship. LC met with Kinokuniya representatives several times and communicated with Kinokuniya staff via email while the project was being planned, and during the project itself. LC felt that the parties have made a generally good beginning, and that the future business relationship could be improved with some adjustments on both sides.

 

(8) Consideration

 

The Library is working under a continuing resolution for Fiscal Year 2007. Thus, LC receives exactly the same budget as last year. It means a slight decrease in its budget. LC only received the budget in late January. It resulted that LC has not been able to make plans for Fiscal Year 2007. LC anticipates very lean budgets for the foreseeable future, and it is likely that staff members who retire may not be replaced. Please note that provision of bibliographic data by vendors has not resulted in loss of work for any LC staff member, nor are any plans afoot for this to happen. On the contrary, bibliographic data supplied by vendors helps free up LC staff to keep current with their acquisitions and cataloging duties. Even with the receipt of vendor records, LC staff members have more than enough work to keep them busy.

 

 

4. University of Michigan’s Google project on Japanese books

 

Mr. Kenji Niki (University of Michigan) made a presentation on the Google project on Japanese books at the University of Michigan including showing how the digitized collection and books can be searched in Mirlyn, the University of Michigan’s online catalog.

 

Google and University of Michigan began the scanning of library collections in December 2005 starting with older materials housed in the Annex Library. Data statistics to report the progress has been released every two weeks. Scanning of Japanese materials in the Annex Library will be completed in April/May 2007. Information of the actual scanning and processing site has not been disclosed.

 

Mr. Niki concluded by addressing the two critical issues and challenges in creating a digital collection from their entire Japanese printed material collection: 1) the issue that some of the material still fall within the copyright protection period and 2) the difficulties of performing Optical character recognition, OCR, to digitize Japanese full texts.

 

 

5. Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR) Database

 

Mr. Shouhei Muta (Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, The National Archives of Japan) made a presentation of the JACAR database [http://www.jacar.go.jp/index.html], a digital database of Japan’s historical archive of official documents of the Japanese government including the Cabinet, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Army and the Navy, dating from the Meiji period to 1945. Mr. Muta outlined the mission of the Center and the database. “Anytime, anywhere, anyone and free” -- Mission of the JACAR is to provide access to historical documents to the general public, anytime, from anywhere, and for free.  JACAR does not just follow the traditional archiving practice but also integrate and take advantage of the Internet technology to provide access to historical official documents of the pre-war Japanese government.

 

Mr. Muta demonstrated the search functions of JACAR including index search, keyword search, layered search, and cross file search in JACAR, National Archives of Japan and other archives.

 

 

6. Youth, war, and social change: teaching Japan through popular music

 

Professor Ian Condry (MIT) discussed his course, teaching Japan through popular music, and including issues that librarians are concerned with, including copyright, licensing related to Japanese pop music collection in an academic library. Topics were:

 

  • The Creative Commons licenses [http://creativecommons.org/]. Use of the Creative Commons licenses by copyright owners to avoid the copyright problems of sharing information. 
  • Fan-subtitled (a.k.a. funsub). Controversial translation versions of Japanese music videos into English that are distributed for free via the Internet.
  • Metamedia Project at MIT [http://metamedia.mit.edu/]. Open archives media documents for teaching and learning humanities subjects. Faculty members at MIT build subject-specific mini archives for teaching.

 

Professor Condry then briefly outlined his course, the Japanese cultural history through popular music from the post-war recovery period to current. He also described how the MIT Lewis Music Library provided assistance to his course by loaning the students iPods that had been loaded with an extensive collection of Japanese popular music. Over a one and half year period, the iPods were loaned to students ninety times, and it was considered“a great success.”

 

7. Questions and Answers

 

Following reports and presentations, there were a few questions from attendees for Mr. Niki regarding the Google project.

 

Q. Does the Google project include the U.S. government publications?

A. Yes. Google has been scanning the government publications.

 

Q. How is the quality assurance of digital files done?

A. Google does not spend time to check duplicates. Material in not-so-good conditions is not scanned. I do not have information on how missing pages are checked, and whether even spot-checks are conducted.

 

Q. What kind of material in the Japanese Collection has been selected for scanning? Are there any criteria?

A. Scanning of 8,600 titles has been done. One criterion is to scan titles that are older than fifty years, which is the copyright protection duration in Japan.

 

 

The meeting concluded at 10:20 a.m.

 

 

 

(Recorded by Eiichi Ito.)

 

 

 

2006 CEAL Conference

2007 CEAL Conference

Committee on Japanese Materials (CJM)

 

Boston Marriott Copley Square, Salon A-C

Boston, MA

 

March 22, 2007, 8:30 a.m.- 10:20 a.m.

 

MINUTES

 

 

The 2007 annual meeting of the Committee on Japanese Materials (CJM) was called to order at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, 22 March 2007 at Salon A-C, Boston Marriott Copley Square.

 

 

1. Greeting, update and report

Ms. Keiko Yokota-Carter, Chair of the CJM, welcomed the participants and introduced (1) the members of the committee; (2) retired members; (3) new members during the last twelve months; and presented an update of the CJM activities as described below.

 

(1) CJM members

 

  • Ms. Keiko Yokota-Carter (Chair), University of Washington
  • Ms. Tokiko Brazzell, University of Hawaii
  • Mr. Antony Boussemart, Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient
  • Mr. Eiichi Ito, Library of Congress
  • Ms. Tomoko Kakehi, University of British Columbia
  • Ms. Haruko Nakamura, Yale University
  • Mr. Ikuo Sasakawa, University of Tokyo (absent)
  • Mr. Kenneth Kazuo Tanaka, University of Maryland (absent)

 

(2) Retired and new members

 

  • Ms.Yoshiko Gotoh Doherty (National Library of Medicine)

 

(4) New members

 

·        Ms. Tomoko Biolock, Japanese Studies Librarian (University of Southern California)

  • Ms. Yoko Okunishi, Japanese Copy-Cataloger (University of California at Los Angeles
  • Ms. Kiyoyo Pipher, Reference Librarian (Library of Congress)
  • Mr. Kenichiro Shimada, Cataloging Librarian (Gordon W. Prange Collection/Special Collections Cataloging (University of Maryland, College Park)

 

(4) Report from Chair

 

Ms. Yokoto-Carter reported on an ad-hoc meeting on Japanese digital resources in the US which took place at the University of Tokyo on September 1, 2006, and which was co-sponsored by the Japan Association of National University Libraries (JANUL), the North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources (NCC) and CJM. At that meeting, issues related to the subscription of digital products and databases by the North American academic institutions were discussed with representatives from the three major Japanese newspaper companies, Asahi, Nikkei and Yomiuri Shinbun.

 

Later, Ms. Yokota-Carter added that a detailed report on this Tōdai ad-hoc meeting would be presented at the 2007 open meeting of the North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources on March 24, 2007 at Tsai Auditorium of Harvard Center for Government and International Studies.

 

At the present meeting, Ms. Yokota-Carter introduced representatives from Japanese newspaper companies, Ms. Aoki from Asahi Shinbun, Mr. Nishimura and Ms. Mori from Nikkei America. It was also mentioned that the Tōdai ad-hoc meeting was a result of Mr. Sasakawa’s effort to assist and work with the North American libraries and librarians to improve their access to Japanese electronic resources.

 

 

2. Report from Europe

 

Mr. Antony Boussemart (Ecole française d’Extrême Orient) reported on the activities of the community of Japanese librarians in Europe over the past twelve months:

 

  • The number of institutions subscribing to Japanese e-resources including databases is increasing.
  • This subscription increase in Europe is a very positive outcome from the CJM 2006 in San Francisco.
  • The possibility of creating a consortium of Japanese librarians and information specialists in Europe with the purpose of contracting together with Japanese vendors is being considered.

 

Mr. Boussemart introduced the PERSEE website at www.persee.fr, which is the website for scientific journals in social and human sciences, established by the Ministry of State Education, Higher Education and Research, the French government, and which includes 15 journals that may contain articles related to Japanese studies. Another 32 journals will be added in the near future.

 

 

3. Q&A on LC Japanese books outsourcing project

 

Mr. Hideyuki Morimoto (Columbia University) presented questions from CJM members regarding a cataloging outsourcing pilot project at the Library of Congress that were collected prior to the CJM meeting.

 

Mr. Philip A Meltzer (Library of Congress, henceforth, LC) responded to those questions which had been sent to him prior to the meeting, by providing a background, brief description, and outcome of the pilot project as in the following.

 

(1) Background

 

Among the eight Japanese catalogers and the Acting Team Leader on the Japanese Cataloging Team for monograph cataloging, six are eligible to retire. The team received and cataloged approximately 5,000 monographic titles over one year. It is unlikely that those positions will be filled once they are vacated. As a result, LC could find itself without sufficient staff to process incoming Japanese material. However, there might be a solution to save cost for LC in processing Japanese material. Indeed, the acquisitions and cataloging staff proposed that the Library conduct an experiment to see whether a Japanese vendor could supply shelf-ready material that met the Library’s selection and cataloging requirements. For example, Casalini, an Italian book vendor for LC, collaborated on a pilot project the objective of which was to provide shelf-ready material for the LC Italian acquisitions in 2004. Mr. Isamu Tsuchitani, Japanese Team Leader (retired) formed a working group including selection officers, acquisition and cataloging staff members, to pursue this pilot project. The group originally contacted two primary vendors of LC in Japan, 1) Japan Publications Trading Company (JPTC) and 2) the Kinokuniya Company. Kinokuniya expressed interest in working with the Library, so the group negotiated the terms of the pilot project with Kinokuniya.

 

(2) Agreement

 

The Library and Kinokuniya made an agreement in May 2006 that Kinokuniya would supply LC with 250 titles according to LC’s selection guidelines, with original (not copy) core level cataloging records for those titles.

 

(3) Selection

 

Kinokuniya was to select material of research value, 100 titles in the humanities, 100 in social sciences (excluding law), and 50 in science and technology, following the highly detailed General Approval Plan Selection Guidelines. Multipart monographs and serials were to be excluded. Kinokuniya made efforts to avoid duplication in the selection of monographs.

 

(4) Cataloging

 

Below is a description of the technical characteristics of the pilot project:

 

  • Standard LC cataloging documentation was to be followed (AACR2, Library of Congress Rule Interpretations, Library of Congress Subject Headings, the Library of Congress Classification Schedule and Subject Cataloging Manual).
  • Full call numbers were to be provided, including complete Cutter numbers (by conducting shelf-list browse of the LC collection via its home page).
  • Kinokuniya did not perform authority work.
  • They agreed to provide access points governed by existing name, series and subject authority records.
  • Kinokuniya agreed to affix Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) labels to title page versos and item barcodes to book covers.
  • Kinokuniya could not create bib records on RLIN because it served as the OCLC representative in Japan. LC automation experts counseled that it would be very time-consuming to create a new work stream for Japanese monograph records created in OCLC. It was decided to copy the records after they migrated to RLIN (which is where LC catalogs its JACKPHY material).

 

(5) Receipt of material and feedback

 

Pilot project material was sent in four large shipments, and arrived at LC between mid-May and the end of June, 2006. LC staff wished to thoroughly ascertain the quality of Kinokuniya’s cataloging, and provide Kinokuniya with as complete a report on their cataloging as possible. Every record was scrutinized carefully, and highly detailed feedback was sent to Kinokuniya.

 

(6) Workflow

 

There was a several-month delay in having the records loaded into RLIN; therefore, each Cutter number had to be checked in LC’s ILS to make sure that it had not been used for another item in the interim. A certain amount of processing still had to be done at LC. LC staff had to perform copy cataloging on all of the records after they had been loaded into RLIN. They had to perform authority control and end-stage processing on LC’s ILS.

 

(7) Results

 

For the most part, Kinokuniya selected material according to LC’s selection guidelines. It should be noted that it usually takes several years to learn how to select material for LC. Kinokuniya has made a good beginning. Reviewers were favorably impressed by the overall quality of Kinokuniya’s cataloging, considering that they had just begun to catalog. Particularly noteworthy was the high quality of descriptive cataloging and word division, and the almost complete absence of typographical errors. A good start was also made on subject cataloging. Acquisitions staff had to handle pilot project material only once, dramatically reducing and streamlining processing time in that unit. Both Kinokuniya and LC staff approached the project as the beginning of a long-term relationship. LC met with Kinokuniya representatives several times and communicated with Kinokuniya staff via email while the project was being planned, and during the project itself. LC felt that the parties have made a generally good beginning, and that the future business relationship could be improved with some adjustments on both sides.

 

(8) Consideration

 

The Library is working under a continuing resolution for Fiscal Year 2007. Thus, LC receives exactly the same budget as last year. It means a slight decrease in its budget. LC only received the budget in late January. It resulted that LC has not been able to make plans for Fiscal Year 2007. LC anticipates very lean budgets for the foreseeable future, and it is likely that staff members who retire may not be replaced. Please note that provision of bibliographic data by vendors has not resulted in loss of work for any LC staff member, nor are any plans afoot for this to happen. On the contrary, bibliographic data supplied by vendors helps free up LC staff to keep current with their acquisitions and cataloging duties. Even with the receipt of vendor records, LC staff members have more than enough work to keep them busy.

 

 

4. University of Michigan’s Google project on Japanese books

 

Mr. Kenji Niki (University of Michigan) made a presentation on the Google project on Japanese books at the University of Michigan including showing how the digitized collection and books can be searched in Mirlyn, the University of Michigan’s online catalog.

 

Google and University of Michigan began the scanning of library collections in December 2005 starting with older materials housed in the Annex Library. Data statistics to report the progress has been released every two weeks. Scanning of Japanese materials in the Annex Library will be completed in April/May 2007. Information of the actual scanning and processing site has not been disclosed.

 

Mr. Niki concluded by addressing the two critical issues and challenges in creating a digital collection from their entire Japanese printed material collection: 1) the issue that some of the material still fall within the copyright protection period and 2) the difficulties of performing Optical character recognition, OCR, to digitize Japanese full texts.

 

 

5. Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR) Database

 

Mr. Shouhei Muta (Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, The National Archives of Japan) made a presentation of the JACAR database [http://www.jacar.go.jp/index.html], a digital database of Japan’s historical archive of official documents of the Japanese government including the Cabinet, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Army and the Navy, dating from the Meiji period to 1945. Mr. Muta outlined the mission of the Center and the database. “Anytime, anywhere, anyone and free” -- Mission of the JACAR is to provide access to historical documents to the general public, anytime, from anywhere, and for free.  JACAR does not just follow the traditional archiving practice but also integrate and take advantage of the Internet technology to provide access to historical official documents of the pre-war Japanese government.

 

Mr. Muta demonstrated the search functions of JACAR including index search, keyword search, layered search, and cross file search in JACAR, National Archives of Japan and other archives.

 

 

6. Youth, war, and social change: teaching Japan through popular music

 

Professor Ian Condry (MIT) discussed his course, teaching Japan through popular music, and including issues that librarians are concerned with, including copyright, licensing related to Japanese pop music collection in an academic library. Topics were:

 

  • The Creative Commons licenses [http://creativecommons.org/]. Use of the Creative Commons licenses by copyright owners to avoid the copyright problems of sharing information. 
  • Fan-subtitled (a.k.a. funsub). Controversial translation versions of Japanese music videos into English that are distributed for free via the Internet.
  • Metamedia Project at MIT [http://metamedia.mit.edu/]. Open archives media documents for teaching and learning humanities subjects. Faculty members at MIT build subject-specific mini archives for teaching.

 

Professor Condry then briefly outlined his course, the Japanese cultural history through popular music from the post-war recovery period to current. He also described how the MIT Lewis Music Library provided assistance to his course by loaning the students iPods that had been loaded with an extensive collection of Japanese popular music. Over a one and half year period, the iPods were loaned to students ninety times, and it was considered“a great success.”

 

7. Questions and Answers

 

Following reports and presentations, there were a few questions from attendees for Mr. Niki regarding the Google project.

 

Q. Does the Google project include the U.S. government publications?

A. Yes. Google has been scanning the government publications.

 

Q. How is the quality assurance of digital files done?

A. Google does not spend time to check duplicates. Material in not-so-good conditions is not scanned. I do not have information on how missing pages are checked, and whether even spot-checks are conducted.

 

Q. What kind of material in the Japanese Collection has been selected for scanning? Are there any criteria?

A. Scanning of 8,600 titles has been done. One criterion is to scan titles that are older than fifty years, which is the copyright protection duration in Japan.

 

 

The meeting concluded at 10:20 a.m.

 

 

 

(Recorded by Eiichi Ito.)