JSIST 2004 Pages: December 3, 2004

Speaker: FUJIMOTO Naoki, NDL

December 3, 2004

Mr. Naoki Fujimoto explained the activities and organization of the NDL's Rare Books and Old Materials Division which selects, catalogs, and provides access and reference services for the Library's Japanese (those produced before 1868), Chinese (those produced before 1912), and Western old books (those produced before 1830). The Division holds ca. 300,000 volumes, including ca. 2,000 titles that are designated as rare books. Retrospective conversion of catalog data for Japanese old books was completed last year, while that for Chinese books is in the process; NDL-OPAC contains records of ca. 40,000 titles for Japanese old books and will have 12,000 titles for Chinese old books when the project is completed in next summer.

Ms. Fujimoto outlined some characteristic special collections, several items from which were displayed in the classroom. NDL has constructed an image database of the Library's rare holdings Kichosho Gazo Database, which now contains ca. 23,000 images of Japanese and Chinese books and prints with color illustration. Moromori ki, 64 scrolls, a diary by a court noble Nakahawa Moromori from the Nanbokucho Period, which was designated as important cultural property in 2002, will be included in the image database in the near future.

The session was completed by a demonstration and practice of how to open and close a scroll.

[Prepared by Toshie Marra.]

After a brief introduction by the Director-General Yoichi Matsuno, Professor Shoichiro Hara discussed digital resources management at NIJL with a focus on the problems they had and the future perspectives for resource sharing with Z39.50.

Ms. Kayoko Toda made a demonstration of the Kokusho Kihon and the Kotenseki Sogo Mokuroku databases. With the former, it is now possible to search in romanization. Kotenseki Sogo Mokuroku (http://base1.nijl.ac.jp/~koten/ksearch.html). Database has become available to public since February 2004.

After a tour to Reading Rooms of the Library and of the Dept. of Historical Documents, a Q & A session was held with 17 NIJL professors and staffs.

[Prepared by Toshie Marra.]