NCC News: News

CDDP Video Series Highlight: How to Use Japan Search - My Note

In response to the challenges and obstacles created by the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing importance of digital tools for access to Japanese material, NCC’s Comprehensive Digitization and Discoverability Program Task Force (CDDP) is collaborating with institutions and scholars to release a video series highlighting digital resources for teaching, learning, and research. Created with funding support from Toshiba International Foundation (TIFO), the CDDP Video Series offers instructional videos on freely available resources and cutting-edge projects related to Japanese Studies, highlighting useful tools and best practices. If you are interested in submitting a video to the series, please contact CDDP via our form. To view the full list of videos presently available, click here.

Did you know that the National Diet Library has a feature called “My Note” that allows you to quickly generate a robust collection of digitized materials on a topic by pulling from sites linked to Japan Search? Create a curated selection of your favorite digitized materials, saving them in one convenient place. This “My Note” collection allows you to hone in on specific items of interest to you, and even explore these works using more advanced options.

The “Full Mode,” for example, can be used to navigate metadata from your collection, annotate images, add timelines, and more. You can then export your work to your own website, making this an ideal way to find, collate, annotate and flesh out information on digitized materials on the topic of your choice! This short CDDP video gives an in-depth introduction to this incredibly useful tool. The various features of My Note are also marked with time signatures in the video, making it easy to skip directly to the part of the video in which you are interested and learn about specific aspects of My Note’s functionality, both pros and cons.

The My Note tool allows you to pull together materials from across the internet and work with them in diverse ways in a single browser-based framework and/or exported to your own workspace. Check out the video to learn more about this helpful resource!