(4 Nov 2022) Librarians around Japan are raising concerns their independence may be in jeopardy after the education ministry asked them to stock more books about North Korea’s abductions of Japanese nationals. Following the Cabinet Secretariat’s instructions, the education ministry sent a document to public and school libraries, asking them to help maintain public attention…
(29 Oct 2022) Elementary, junior high and high school students who have used e-books tend to find paper books easier to read, according to a recent survey conducted by the Japan School Library Association. The annual survey is conducted to determine reading trends among students. A total of 14,091 students enrolled at 161 schools nationwide,…
(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…