(Nov 2020) The National Diet Library Preservation Forum is a place where people involved in the care and preservation of library materials can learn about subjects of common interest and exchange practical ideas.
The first NDL Forum on Preservation was held in 1990, and on December 19, 2019, was held for the 30th time overall. Over the years, a total of 53 specialists, librarians, and other professionals from institutions involved in preservation have lectured or given reports on subjects selected by the NDL, and we appreciate their cooperation and contributions to our program.
In 1989, the NDL was designated the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions Strategic Programme on Preservation and Conservation (IFLA PAC) Regional Centre for Asia. We established a Preservation Cooperation Program and sponsored events such as an NDL Annual Symposium on Preservation, a Round Table on Cooperation in Preserving Library Collections, and an NDL Forum on Preservation. The NDL Annual Symposium on Preservation, which was held ten times from 1990 to 1999, was a large-scale program in which six or seven different speakers discussed a particular subject in front of an audience of sometimes more than 300 participants. In contrast to this, the NDL Forum on Preservation was intended to be an event where a relatively small number of participants could freely discuss a specific topic.
In this article, we look back over 30 years of efforts by the NDL and other Japanese libraries to preserve library materials as seen through the NDL Forum on Preservation.
