NCC News: News

New Year's Message from the Director

Happy New Year of the Ox! Let us hope that this new year will return us to a world where we can meet in person once again.

Like so many of you, NCC’s plans were deeply affected and, indeed, derailed by the pandemic. Our Next Generation Japanese Librarian Workshop and many other events and activities scheduled for last year’s CEAL and AAS conferences in Boston were canceled, but I would like to take a moment to honor all the work and planning that went into them, especially by our Librarian Professional Development Working Group (LPDWG), the presenters, chairs and co-chairs of NCC committees and working groups, who prepared presentations and reports. The effort did not go to waste! Some of the presentations, which were especially useful during the COVID shutdowns, were reworked to post on our Website (see Enhanced Digital Access during COVID). And others will be saved and updated for the in-person networking that we hope will become possible again soon. Our LPDWG held an online networking opportunity for workshop participants, and NCC Chair Haruko Nakamura will be hosting a monthly Open House for people to share thoughts, questions, and ideas in a less formal online setting. NCC had its first all-virtual Council Meeting in October and, like everyone else, we discovered the pros and cons of virtual communication. Our conclusion: both virtual and in-person meetings have their place and purpose in the work we do, and we can use both more strategically in the years ahead.  

One of the advantages of virtual events is that they will make it easier for NCC to bring together all of our various constituencies. Much of NCC’s work is done by professional librarians, but unlike the Center for East Asian Libraries (CEAL), NCC is not a professional librarian organization. It is a Coordinating Council, which depends on the commitment of librarians, faculty, researchers, vendors and publishers, who volunteer their time to improve access to Japanese information resources for the betterment of all. NCC has recently formed two taskforces to help guide us through changing times. Our Membership and Fundraising taskforces are both made up of Japan scholars and librarians, working together to put forth recommendations for directions forward. As you may know, they recently conducted a survey to better understand the needs of all our constituencies, and we will be sharing the results at our Open Meeting during the CEAL conference in March. 

As many of you know, NCC was founded in 1991, and we will be celebrating our 30^th anniversary in 2021 combined with a 4-D (Fourth Decade) Conference to plan how to meet the challenges and opportunities of the years ahead. One of our top priorities is to reaffirm our founding mission while also using our collective imagination to update our mission for the times we live in now. For this reason, we are planning to hold our 30^thanniversary celebration and 4-D conference events primarily through virtual and online venues in the coming year. We will also try to select times when more of our various constituents from North America and abroad can take part in the festivities and discussion. Given that CEAL and the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) conferences will be online this Spring, we have decided to focus our main events in the early fall and winter of 2021 with smaller promotional activities planned throughout the year. We will keep everyone updated on our plans both on our website and social media, as well as at our Open Meeting, which will be held during the CEAL conference (March 18^th and 19^th).

Although there may be many challenges ahead, we are also excited by the opportunities in what we hope will be a time of renewal. If NCC is to continue as the unique organization it is into the next decade, we will need the commitment and dedication of all!

May 2021 bring us all renewed energy and hope for better times ahead!

Tara McGowan, NCC Executive Director