NCC News: News

Introducing NCC's Next Japan Liaison--Professor Sho Sato

We are delighted to announce that Sho Sato, Associate Professor at Doshisha University’s Center for License and Qualification, has agreed to serve as NCC’s next Japan Liaison. Professor Sato obtained his Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) in 2010 and his Ph.D. in Library and Information Science in 2013, both from Tsukuba University. He specializes in open access, information behavior, and user study in academic and public libraries. As a graduate student, he mainly studied Japanese institutional repositories and received his degree with a thesis titled "The Role of Institutional Repositories as a Source of Contents". Since joining the Doshisha University faculty, he has been teaching classes primarily for students who want to become public, academic or school librarians, thus extending his research interests to various types of libraries.

From 2013 to 2020, Professor Sato worked as a part-time investigator at the National Diet Library of Japan (NDL), editing “Current Awareness,” the journal of NDL. From 2018 to 2020, he also worked as Program Officer at the Research Promotion Bureau, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology-Japan. Professor Sato will serve as NCC Japan Liaison from 2022 to 2025. We are delighted to welcome him onboard!

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank outgoing NCC Japan Liaison Professor Shoji Yamada (NICHIBUNKEN) for his contributions over the past 3 years, keeping us informed about important developments relating to digitization and copyright law in Japan. Because the COVID pandemic forced the NCC Council meetings to shift to an online format, Professor Yamada often stayed up all hours of the night and early morning to attend. We want to extend a special thanks to him for his dedication and good humor, despite these challenges. Thank you!!