NCC News: News

CDDP Video Series Highlight: National Institute of Japanese Literature Databases

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.

Calling all premodern Japan Studies scholars! You may have heard of the online Database of Pre-modern Japanese Works (Shin Nihon kotenseki sōgō dētabēsu 新日本古典籍総合データベース) or the Union Catalogue of Early Japanese Books (Nihon kotenseki sōgō mokuroku dētabēsu 日本古典籍総合目録データベース) provided by the National Institute of Japanese Literature (NIJL), but when do you use which, and for what? Now you can become an expert using the latest additions to the CDDP video series: detailed introductory guides to NIJL’s Premodern Japanese Primary Texts Database.

Have you tried these databases and found the results confusing? Find out more about the complications that lead to missing images, missing records, duplicate records, and more. Want to know how to find all texts that contain a work that you are interested in studying? Need to know how many texts of a given work are there in existence? Looking for an image of a specific text? Hoping to find out which library owns an original manuscript of a work or require a specific edition, perhaps a manuscript, woodblock print, or moveable-type version? These two short videos explain each database’s unique characteristics and demonstrate how to use them, allowing you to become a savvy scholar searching successfully for sources in these super significant databases!

Whether you’re wondering what is or is not included in these two databases, there will be something new to discover. These are must-see videos explaining precisely how the databases were constructed, what was included, and, crucially, what has yet to make it in. Important tips help the user make smart choices one which database to search and which search method to use. Check out the videos on our CDDP Video Series page to learn more!