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Asian Collections Volunteer Cataloguing Project Concludes

Mrs Moko Eade, left, with Mayumi Shinozaki, Head of the Japanese Unit

In March 2007 Moko Eade, a former member of the Asian Collections staff, completed four years of volunteer work spent cataloguing old and rare Japanese language books.

Following her retirement from the Japanese Unit at age 65, Moko returned as a volunteer to begin a major cataloguing project on two old and rare collections of Japanese books held by the National Library. Both of these were uncatalogued and therefore inaccessible to readers, but due to a lack of resources existing staff were not able to undertake the task. Moko, who knew the collections well, decided to make it her project to catalogue the collections in full. Over the next four years she steadily worked her way through the Kegan Paul collection of rare Japanese books—so called because it was acquired from the publisher—and a formed collection of works of Japanese biography. Working for a few hours a week, Moko created over 1700 original records for both of these significant collections. In the course of the work she made the interesting discovery that over 10% of the Japanese biography collection titles were not held in the Japanese National Diet Library, and must therefore be regarded as highly rare.

Having achieved her goal, Moko decided to end her volunteering work in the Library and take up some of her many other interests. We are exceedingly grateful to her for contributing her wisdom and skill as a cataloguer to this very worthwhile project.

Amelia McKenzie
Director, Asian Collections