This presentation will introduce a variety of tools for utilizing information resources on the Internet as well as some important techniques for conducting research on the humanities in Japan by presenting examples of our reference services offered by the reference librarians who specialize in the humanities at the National Diet Library (NDL).
Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR) is a digital archive of Asian historical records. JACAR has built and operates an online database for releasing Asian historical records concerning modern Japanese relations with other countries, particularly those in Asia. The documents of the archive are provided by the National Archives of Japan, the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, and the National Institute for Defense Studies of the Ministry of Defense of Japan.
J-STAGE, one of the largest online journal platforms in Japan is playing an important role in supporting scholarly publishing. Since the service started in 1999, it has been continuously growing and currently provides more than 2,000 journals with nearly 2 million articles. It covers many research categories not only basic science, technology, life science and medical science but also social science and humanity which are increasing rapidly these days.
This presentation will focus on my decision to publish the results of my survey of the kyōka surimono commissioned by Edo no Hananari in the form of an online database. Nearly all of the 80 surimono I have ascertained so far are in collections in the West with very few remaining in Japan. Considering the nature of this material, I decided that an online database would be more effective than a publication for communicating the results of my work widely across geographical boundaries and academic fields and for gathering further information.
This presentation introduces how to perform statistical analysis of Japanese textual data using free software called “KH Coder” which I am developing, along with actual analysis examples.
現在のデジタル辞書は主に検索形式、つまりキーワードを入力することで、それに関連する項目が表示され、さらに関連項目から必要な情報を選んで調べるという形であるが、本研究はこのような検索形式とは別のシステムを考えたい。現在、中国の近代作家魯迅の作品の日本語訳における問題点を作品ごとにデータにまとめ、デジタル事典形式で出す作業を行っている。言語辞書とは違い、翻訳に関する事典であるため、比較、対照が必要となる。それゆえ、基本的に原文と訳文の両方を載せなければならない。
The Yamagiwa collection, housed in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was collected by Joseph K. Yamagiwa (1906-1968) who was a scholar of Japanese literature and language at the University of Michigan. The collection consists of two groups: rare books and reference books focused on language. While its rare books were well-selected by scholars, the collection has never been adequately recognized. This presentation will include a history, an overview of the collection, and a few highlights of its items.
Shibusawa Eiichi was a key figure in the establishment of a modern economic system in Japan and the Shibusawa Eiichi Memorial Foundation is dedicated to furthering his ideals in today’s world. Eiichi’s achievements were compiled in the Shibusawa Eiichi denki shiryo (Shibusawa Eiichi Biographical Materials), a 68 volume series (58 main volumes, 10 supplementary volumes), published between 1955 and 1971 that, even today, serves as the basis for research on Eiichi and modern Japanese history.
While information technology has brought about significant improvement in development and dissemination of information and resources to library users, it has also made librarians’ activities easier and more effectively. For example, application program interface (API) allows them to perform some menial repetitive tasks in an automated way and facilitates data-driven decision making.
This presentation introduces a simple but effective method to analyze collective collections in the WorldCat database using OCLC Connexion and the WorldCat Search API.
A large amount of Japanese books have been digitized and are available at HathiTrust and Japan’s National Diet Library’s websites for our library users, but they are mostly old books out of copyright protection. Newer Japanese e-books under copyright are commercially available from two vendors: Maruzen and EBSCO. At the University of California (UC) System where I work, a pilot for demand-driven acquisition (DDA) for Japanese e-books was arranged with EBSCO in winter 2014, and soon it became a regular program with support from the California Digital Library.