(24 Aug 2022) The latest National Diet Library Newsletter has been released, with table of contents as below: Selections from NDL collections Browsing Joruri books with YOSHINAGA Motonobu, NDL Director General (Part Two) Map Collections in the National Diet Library (3) Jutei bankoku zenzu Budget NDL Budget for Fiscal Year 2022 News from…
(19 Jul 2022) NDL is holding an online forum, “Digital Archive Festival 2022 – Japan Search Day” on 25th August. The forum will be conducted in Japanese. More information can be found here (in Japanese).
(25 May 2022) Alarmed by the declining stature of its universities, Japan is planning to shower up to $2.3 billion a year on a handful of schools in hopes of boosting their prominence. The scheme was approved by the Japanese legislature on 18 May, although many details, including how to pick the favored universities, are still…
(19 May 2022) With the enforcement of the Act Partially Amending Japan’s Copyright Act (Act No. 52 of 2021), the NDL is now able to transmit digitized versions of out-of-print or otherwise difficult-to-obtain materials to individuals via the Internet. In making this revision of the law, legislators were responding to advances in digitization and networking…
(6 May 2022) A unique cafe in Japan has been drawing attention in recent weeks. The Manuscript Writing Cafe offers little by way of food or drink (just self-service coffee or tea), but what it does offer is concentration and motivation for writers struggling to finish their work. Patrons pay a small hourly fee and…
By Ruth A. Pagell* What new metric has been added to THE Impact Rankings? How do Japan University Rankings differ from Japan in World Rankings? Is it better to rank 112 or 47 in QS Subject rankings (See Example 1)? (5 May 2022) This is a quick take on the usual spring updates, including…
(12 Apr 2022) YOKOTE, Akita Prefecture–Stocktaking of books at a municipal library here is now fully automated under a trial experiment that potentially could see humans removed from the process altogether. A robot assigned to locate books by reading data stored in integrated circuit (IC) tags on each tome can finish the task in…
(11 Apr 2022) JST, the Japan Science & Technology Agency, has revised its policy on Open Access to research publications and research data management and published on 1 April, 2022. JST developed “JST Policy on Open Access” in 2013 and “JST Policy on Open Access to Research Publications and Research Data Management” in 2017…
(9 Mar 2022) Thousands of ancient parchments recounting the persecution against Christians between the 17th and 19th centuries have been restored and digitized with the collaboration of Japanese cultural institutions. A Vatican Library collection containing 14,000 ancient documents on the history of the persecution of Christians in Japan during the Edo period has been…
(2 Mar 2022) The National Diet Library has released the report of a research project on the response to COVID-19 by public libraries in Japan, which was conducted during fiscal 2021 in cooperation with the Japan Library Association. In the project, an online questionnaire survey was conducted for all public libraries in Japan, and…