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For historical paper-based materials, we are conducting research to analyse their components using natural scientific methods, predominantly optical techniques, to provide fundamental data for restoration. Recently, we analysed the components and constituents of historical paper-based materials through archaeology and cultural heritage science, material structure analysis, botany and genome analysis, and data science methods. In addition, efforts are underway to standardise scientific information such as numerical data and integrate it into our database. This presentation introduces HI’s restoration and conservation techniques for historical paper-based materials. In collaboration with the EAJRS Conservation/Preservation Working Group, it establishes a consultation service aimed at assisting European institutions facing challenges in conserving and restoring historical paper-based materials, while also contemplating the global dissemination of conservation techniques in this age of digital connectivity.

In recent years, the National Diet Library (NDL) has been engaged in the large-scale digitization of Japanese publications and the creation of their text data. The current goal is to complete the digitization of books published in Japan in 2000 or earlier as soon as possible. 3.9 million materials including books, journals and doctoral theses have been digitized already, some of which are available on the internet. Detailed searches of these materials require text data.
The 2018 amendment to the Copyright Act allows text data on digitized materials to be created and used for searching without the permission of the copyright holder. In response, the National Diet Library has created text data for 2.57 million digitized materials and is using it for full-text search services of digitized materials in the National Diet Library Digital Collections. In addition, the National Diet Library Material Search for Persons with Disabilities (Mina Search) allows those who are blind, visually impaired, dyslexic, or otherwise print disabled to download text data themselves or through libraries. The text data of newly digitized materials will continue to be produced.

As a new service to researchers in the field of Asian studies the Specialised Information Service Asia (Fachinformationsdienst (FID) Asien) which is managed by the East Asia Department of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin offers the CrossAsia Open Access Repository since summer 2022. Recommended by the German Research Foundation its goal is to provide open, free-of-charge and long-term access to quality scholarly materials from all fields of social sciences, cultural studies and humanities related to Asia. Nevertheless the views and expectations of information specialists, users and researchers concerning the Repository differ to some extent. In this talk the framework of its implementation, the reactions from the research community and the obstacles as well as the merits of promoting this new service will be shared.

The mission of our journal is two-fold: to make scholarship on Japanese Studies written in English available to scholars all over the world, and to make Japanese scholarship accessible to Anglophone readership through translation of original Japanese scholarship. As a result, Japanese Studies will not be limited only to Japan and will be able to reach the world.
This presentation will discuss 1) How we modernize Monumenta Nipponica by utilizing digital connectivity to make Japanese Studies in the humanities widely available and accessible to the world; 2) How we continue to explore the possibilities, limitations, and hazards in the rapid development of AI; 3) How we upheld editorial and publication traditions to maintain the highest standard of publication. This presentation will include a Q&A about the journal for potential contributors and interested researchers.

In contemporary higher education, key skills include being able to apply knowledge and use a variety of resources, which are also needed in the world of work. This paper presents the case of an applied project course for master's level students at the University of Helsinki in spring 2024. This course aimed to support students in improving competences in using Japanese resources. In the course, students majoring in Japanese language or Japanese studies were tasked with planning and organizing the "Japanese Stories about Food Seminar", which was open to the public. They were also responsible for managing related events, such as online exhibition of Japanese materials brought from Japan by the seminar lecturers and materials held by the Finnish National Library. Finally, the students translated lectures from the seminar to be published later on various channels.

The name of Ariga Nagao (有賀長雄, 1860-1921), a Japanese jurist and sociologist, rarely appears in books on the history of Japanese intellectual thought. My attention to him was attracted due to the translation of his work "On Bungaku" (『文學論』, August 1885) as "Theory of Literature" (Bugaeva, Dagmara. Japanese Publicists of the late 19th Century. Moscow, "Nauka", 1978). For a long time, I truly believed that "On Bungaku" was the only main paper on Confucianism and its role in the development of modern Japan. However, I changed my point of view after discovering Ariga's "The Correct Vision of China. Complete works" (『支那正觀全』, 1918), where "On Bungaku" was published together with "On Philosophy of Confucius" (『聖門哲學論』, December 1885) as appendixes to the final work "The Correct Vision of China". Consequently, "On Bungaku" became an introduction to his study of the foundations European and Chinese-Japanese civilizations and their interaction, in which Ariga presents the "ideal model of culture" (by Seki Ryōichi).

EAJRS panel discussions have been held several times until last year, but this year we would like to think together about topics that we could not fully discuss due to time constraints.
The term "open science" has been used for some time now, but when libraries consider supporting open science, what kind of skills are required? This panel discussion aims to consider, with a view to preceding studies such as "Time to Adopt: Librarians’ New Skills and Competency Profiles" (Schmidt et al. 2016), what skills librarians will need in the future in the following areas:
Citizen science
Data/AI literacy
Digital humanities

In 2023 the Language of Cataloguing Taskforce (LoCT) was set up in the British Library to look at existing rules for the derivation of non-Roman script cataloguing records from other libraries with the aim of finding new sources of records (our main sources hitherto being OCLC including LC records and, for Japanese, NACSIS records). Particular attention was paid to whether it would be possible to use records whose language of cataloguing (as found in MARC 21 field 040$b) was not eng (English) and if so which fields would need to be altered. This would be a major difference from cataloguing practice hitherto.

Although multilingualism or multi-scriptiality is a constitutive factor for research, teaching, learning, and working in all academic institutions, academic infrastructures such as (university) libraries have been developed primarily by and for English and Latin script. This has resulted in a tremendous gap in resource findability between Latin and non-Latin scripts.
This affects not only the accessibility of library holdings in non-Latin scripts like Japanese, but also the rising scholarly field of digital humanities and (digital) social sciences in the area studies disciplines, which are dependent on the use of multilingual (meta)data, multilingual digital tools (platforms, software, ...) and, in particular, the use of non-Latin scripts in digital environments.

日本語教授法で人口知能の使用