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7th CDNLAO Meeting: Japan Country Report

National Diet Library of Japan: its library services in the 21st century

Masao Tobari, Librarian National Diet Library

First, I would like to express my sincere respect and gratitude to Mr. Daniel Paraide, Librarian of the National Library of Papua New Guinea, for his efforts that have led to the successful holding of this 7th CDNLAO Meeting. Most regrettably, Mr. Masao Toban, Librarian of the National Diet Library of Japan, cannot be here today and has asked me to present the report of our Library as his proxy. I am the Director of the Institute of Library and Information Science of the National Diet Library, and my name is Sakae Edamatsu.

lntroduction

As you may know, the National Diet Library, NDL, is scheduled to open its new facility Kansai-kan (tentative name) in 2002 in Kansai Science City, 500km away from Tokyo, somewhere in the middle of Kyoto, Osaka and Nara Prefectures. Then the NDL, with electronic library functions will offer new expanded services. At the 6th CDNLAO Meeting, Mr. Naotake lto, the then Director of the Acquisitions Department of NDL, reported on the Kansai-kan plan as well as on our electronic library projects. Today I will focus on three projects which NDL is now setting its sights on and are substantial for the new library services in the next century.

The 50th Anniversary of NDL

NDL celebrated its 50th anniversary this June, holding brilliant commemorative events including an official ceremony, a rare books exhibition and a symposium.

NDL was founded in 1948 by title National Diet Library Law. Though it inherited the collections of the library of the House of Peers and House of Representatives of the former Imperial Diet, as well as those of the former Imperial Library, the law took as a model the Library of Congress of the United States, adopting the idea that a capable research library assisting the Diet (Japanese Parliament) is indispensable, for the Diet is the highest organ of state power under the postwar Constitution of Japan. Since then, for five decades now, NDL has been proud of its minion declared in the preamble of the National Diet Library Law:

"The National Diet library is hereby established as a result of the firm conviction that truth makes us free and with the object of contributing to international peace and the democratization of Japan as promised in our Constitution."

Under this, it has been, as the sole national library in Japan, acquiring books and other library materials, serving the Diet members and offering a wide range of library services to the executive and judicial agencies as well as the whole nation.

Today we see enormous changes going on in every social, economic and cultural aspects, brought about by highly advanced information/communication technology. It is a global phenomenon. The 50-year old NDL has started to tread a new path for the next five decades, aiming to improve both domestic and international library services, on the basis of its achievements up to now.

The whole library is tackling three major projects: the Kansai-kan, the International Library of Children's Literature and electronic Library projects.

Kansai-kan

The concept of the Kansai-kan was born nearly 20 years ago and the project is the core of the NDL's future planning. We had already informed you of the general picture of the Kansai-kan projects at the previous CDNLAO Meeting in 1995, so I will tell you of the recent developments and future prospects.

In 1996 NDL held a design competition for the Kansai-kan, which drew 493 applicants from both Japan and around the world. Mr. Fumio Tota, a Japanese architect, won the first prize. The building is four-stories above ground, with the same number of basements underground. A general reading room (5,000sq. m) is on the first basement. Stacks will be in the second basement to the fourth. Practical designing has already been finished and we will hold a ground-breaking ceremony on November 30. Construction will be completed in 2002.

At the same time, NDL is examining the details of the five basic functions of the Kansai-kan:

  1. documentary information supply, making the most of electronic library functions,
  2. documentary information supply on Asia,
  3. library cooperation,
  4. research and development on library and information science, training/exchange program,
  5. huge storage of library materials.

The services for visiting users in the Kansai-kan is another topic which is now under consideration.

In March 1996 NDL held an international symposium titled National Libraries in the 21st Century, which was intended to contribute to the future planning not only for the Kansai-kan but also for the whole Library. The participants, representatives of national libraries from nine countries: Australia, China, France, Korea, Norway, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan, talked about a variety of issues on the theme. Each national library, which was facing the current changes related to the information-oriented society had been making every effort to improve library services and figure out future strategies. We also learned that we had in common such issues as how to manage digital publications and an electronic library.

In March 1997 NDL held another international symposium: Current status and future of bibliographic information in Southeast Asian Countries, inviting participants from eight countries in the region, who gave lectures on the present state, challenges and future prospects of the networking of bibliographic information of each Southeast Asian country. Lecturers were from Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Japan. In Southeast Asia, library automation and networking are rapidly progressing in response to the Internet and other computer technologies and it was an invaluable opportunity to exchange opinions for the future Asian networking.

On the other hand, the Asian Resource Information Center will be opened in the Kansai-kan, to carry out a documentary information supply function, which will be one of the basic functions of the Kansai-kan.

The center, as an essential of the Kansai-kan, will be in charge of four basic roles, namely:

  1. the maintenance and improvement of domestic and foreign resources on Asia, the development of its bibliographic database,
  2. the delivery of Asian documentary information,
  3. the focal point of Asian information services in Japan.
  4. international cooperation activities related to Asian information.

The center will be located on the first basement of the Kansai-kan and it will meet not only the information demands of remote users but also offer on open shelves some 50 thousand volumes of reference books, core books, magazines, newspapers etc. on Asia. Readers will be able to request materials or photoduplication and access the Internet without leaving their desks that are equipped with PCs. It should be urgent to acquire and organize Asian information resources for the center and now we are very actively preparing for it. In particular, we are tackling the development of information services related to electronic library functions such as bibliographic information database of materials in Asian languages, especially Chinese and Korean, in cooperation with other organisations.

When it is opened, the Kansai-kan will work in tandem with the present Tokyo main library and the International Library of Children's Literature, about which I will talk next, to implement the NDL’s library services. What the services should be, how the library materials and the organization should be arranged etc., the whole picture of the future NDL must be clearly drawn up immediately. The draft of it will come out by the end of next March.

International Library of Children’s Literature

Another major NDL project for the 21st century is the setting up of the International Library of Children's Literature which will be partly opened in 2000.

NDL acquires domestic materials comprehensively as the deposit library and, as a result, our collection includes children's literature. At the moment we have 130 thousand juvenile books and 1500 titles of magazines, some of which were inheritance of the former Imperial Library and others have been collected since the establishment of the present NDL. However, up to now, the availability of these materials is limited, treated in a different way from general materials and the demands for the improvement of the NDL's services for children’s literature have been heard from interested people. At the same time the opinion that Japan should have a national juvenile library like western countries was gradually spreading around the country. In response to these requests and according to a council report of our library, in 1997 the setting up of the International Library of Children's Literature, with remodelling of the Ueno Branch Library of NDL (six km northeast of the Tokyo main library), was fixed. The facility built in 1906 for the Imperial Library being designated as a historical architecture by the Tokyo municipal government, it will be reborn as a children’s library after restoration attempts to keep its original form. It will be partly opened in two years, namely, in 2000 and be completed in 2002 when the Kansai-kan is also scheduled to be opened.

The International Library of Children's Literature will contribute to the improvement of the children's reading environment and information access on the basis of the juvenile books and related research materials held by the Library; it will, as a national center, support the libraries which offer direct services to children and help a variety of research activities on juvenile publishing and related culture. It will also be a facility for children, which will provide various services to motivate them to enjoy reading and feel close to libraries. The Library will take advantage of electronic library functions as well as other improved infrastructure for material and information.

NDL has been developing electronic library systems since 1995 as a part of an electronic library model development project. A bibliographic database of juvenile literature held by NDL (some 130 thousand items) has been developed and items acquired before 1950 (some 8300) digitized, texts of which are readable as images. Furthermore, as experimental systems of multimedia database, NDL is now developing three systems: a multilingual system for juvenile literature supply, a research guidance system for juvenile literature and an oral interface research system.

Electronic Library

Third, the promotion of electronic library projects. The electronic library, the so-called ' library without walls' offers library services that transcend physical distance. NDL, after the opening of the Kansai-kan, will provide new services with electronic library functions in tandem with the Tokyo main library, which is the headquarters, the Kansai-kan and the International Library of Children's Literature.

NDL has been carrying out various projects to test and scrutinize the technical feasibility and the operation-related issues, both on its own and in cooperation with other organizations.

The pioneer was the Pilot Electronic Library Project, a joint attempt with the Information-technology Promotion Agency (IPA) under the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, started in 1994. We have already given you the outline at the previous CDNLAO meeting. The Electronic Library Demonstration Experiment Project digitized some 10 million page contents of part of our collections mainly as image information, some of which are available on the Internet for the sake of its evaluation. We have also begun in 1998 an open experiment putting the Japanese government publications written in English on the Internet. It is a part of the G8 electronic library projects (Bibliotheca Universalis) which France and Japan are in charge of and it aims to meet demands for government publications from abroad and to make the activities of the Japanese Government understood internationally.

Another Joint project with IPA, the National Union Catalogue Network Project, has finished its experimental phase and since this year it has been in practical operation as an independent project of NDL. The participants are 43 domestic libraries, mainly prefectural libraries, of which 26 offer their data. At present the union catalogue database contains more than 12 million data items.

At the same time, making allowances for these experimental projects, NDL has been examining intensively how and what the electronic library of the whole NDL should be and this March drew up the National Diet Library Electronic Library Concepts and the National Diet Library Basic Plan of the Electronic Library Infrastructure System. Now we are trying very hard to bring them to fruition

Conclusion

As I mentioned earlier today, the 50 year old NDL has started to tread a new path for the next five decades. At the beginning of the road, we are expecting the opening of both the International Library of Children's Literature and the Kansai-kan. They aim to offer new advanced library services to anyone, anywhere and any time, making the most of electronic library functions, in tandem with the present Tokyo main library. Before the realization of the electronic library, we have a deal of problems to be solved such as financial, institutional, including copyright and its charge-related problems, and technical issues. NDL is determined to make every effort to examine from various angles and solve these matters, by forming consent among the parties concerned. We are now grappling with library services of the 21st century.


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