(23 Nov 2025) The stately main reading room of a Kobe University library that survived World War II as well as the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake is reminiscent of the world of “Harry Potter.” The university is home to nine libraries, with the oldest being the Library for Social Sciences located in Kobe’s Nada…
(12 Nov 2025) Visitors to a certain library in Japan’s capital were greeted by a poster reading, “Please try the ‘AI (artificial intelligence) librarian!’” But what is an AI librarian? Librarians are, of course, staff who manage the collecting, organizing and preserving of books in municipal and school libraries. They also help readers find books and…
(25 Jun 2025) Researchers in Japan have found that the more public library books a municipality has, the fewer residents require long-term nursing care. Why is this? The Mainichi Shimbun spoke with one of the authors of the research paper titled “Public libraries and functional disability: A cohort study of Japanese older adults.” The research…
(19 May 2025) Four members of the Sumiyoshi-kai were arrested in Tokyo’s Kiyose City district on suspicion of operating an office in an apartment that was 90 meters from a library, when yakuza offices are only permitted outside of a 200-meter radius of libraries. This might seem at odds with many people’s images of…
(24 Mar 2025) Tanaka Ryonosuke of the Acquisitions and Bibliography Department, National Diet Library, introduces the transition of the Japanese National Bibliography from paper-based formats to digital data, now known as the Japanese National Bibliographic Data in this article. It began with “Nohon Geppo” in 1948 and evolved to digital formats with JAPAN/MARC in…
(4 Mar 2025) A public library in Kanazawa resembles a sublime theater and offers more than 1.1 million books. For three days, NHK asked people what books piqued their interest and how they spend their time here. Watch the 30 minutes video here.
(28 Feb 2025) The Asian Research Library, The University of Tokyo, welcomes all interested parties to the symposium “Libraries and Archival Practices in the Early Modern Eastern Islamic World,” which it is co-organizing. Pre-registration is required for both on-site and online participation. Libraries and archival practices played a pivotal role in shaping the intellectual, cultural,…
(20 Feb 2025) A total of 256 municipalities have neither a public library nor a bookstore, the Yomiuri Shimbun has learnt. This amounts to 15 per cent of the 1,718 municipalities nationwide. “If having few chances to enjoy books becomes normal, print culture itself will fade away,” an expert said about the decrease in places…
(30 Jan 2025) At the National Diet Library, we will hold this year’s Reference Cooperative Database (Lefa Cooperative) Business Forum with the theme “What does Generated AI bring to reference services?” How will the development of generated AI-related technologies have an impact on reference services? In this forum, we invite the people of the scammers…
(27 Jan 2025) The Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and CHORUS have joined forces to support Japan’s move toward a national open access policy, which is set to take effect in April 2025. At the recent Japan Library Fair on November 20, 2024, the organizations hosted the CHORUS/JST Forum, titled “Many Paths to Open Access,” bringing together six expert…