Year 2000 Conference
Japanese Library Resource Sharing in the Next Decade:
Collection Building, Technological Innovation, and International Cooperation
A Conference Organized by the National Coordinating Committee on Japanese Library Resources
March 6 and 7, 2000
Preceding the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies
Town and Country Inn, San Diego, California
This conference will set the agenda for the National Coordinating Committee on Japanese Library Resources (NCC) for the first decade of the 21st century by developing a consensus on priorities for cooperative projects and activities. New and updated strategies are required for many facets of librarianship, including Collection Development, Access to Serial Literature, Technical Services from Ordering to Cataloging, Recruitment and Training of Librarians, Serving Under-Served Constituencies, and International Cooperation. Resources from Japan are increasingly available through the enabling technology of global networks, necessitating international planning between Japanese librarians and their North American counterparts.
The conference will bring together North American Japanese Studies librarians, representatives from North American organizations and agencies interested in the study of Japan, and colleagues from Japanese libraries and organizations for two full days, Monday, March 6 and Tuesday, March 7.
An opening session on Monday March 6 will begin by reviewing the goals identified at the 1991 Hoover meeting that led to the establishment of the NCC and will survey the subsequent activities to reach those goals taken by the NCC since its establishment in 1992. The NCC's current projects include an art catalog project to exchange current exhibition catalogs, a multi-volume sets project which funds the purchase of expensive multi-volume sets in the Japanese language, and a serials/ILL project to improve access to information in the US and Japan. It also advises the Japan Foundation on its library support program and its librarian training program, and has trained both librarians and faculty in the U.S. in the use of Japanese databases.
Following the opening session, there will be a presentation on funding prospects for the field of Japanese studies, reports from key libraries and organizations, including the National Diet Library, NACSIS, and the Library of Congress and a discussion of changing faculty research and teaching needs.
The afternoon of the first day will begin with an overview of the activities of all the AAU/ARL Global Resources Programs followed by extended discussions of copyright issues, interlibrary loan and document delivery and digital initiatives, in both the United States and Japan.
Tuesday morning will have three rotating break-out sessions which will discuss issues related to monographs, serials, technical services, isolated scholars and librarian training. Then, on Tuesday afternoon, a final plenary session will hear the recommendations from the break-out sessions, prioritize initiatives, and set NCC strategies for the next decade. Both plenary sessions will be facilitated by George Soete, who is an Organizational Development Consultant, Office of Leadership and Management Services, Association of Research Libraries, and served as a facilitator for the 1991 Hoover meeting that led to the establishment of the NCC.
In advance of the conference, the discussion leaders for each session have prepared background papers outlining key issues and identifying possible solutions. These, along with outlines of new initiatives provided by the Japanese participants, are available on NCC's web site.
The
Schedule of the Conference is being continually updated, so please check it frequently.
Summary of Breakout Session Issues
1.
Defining the Issues for Monographic Collections (Yasuko Makino, Princeton University, and Mihoko Miki, Columbia University)
- Assessment of information needs
- Evaluating the Multi-Volume Sets Project
- Distributing collection responsibilities at the research level cooperative collection development
- Collecting and providing access to Grey Literature
2.
Defining the Issues for Serials and Newspapers (Mary Jackson, Association of Research Libraries, and Maureen Donovan, Ohio State University)
- Holdings within the US -- union list
- Diversifying North American periodical collections: Commitment to titles, canceling to add
- Building systematic and distributed collections of newspaper backfiles
- Newspaper indexes
3.
Technical services (Hideyuki Morimoto, University of California Berkeley, and Scott Edward Harrison, University of Washington at Seattle)
- Incomplete and poor quality retrospective conversion (recon) of card catalogs
- Harmonization of US and Japanese cataloging standards
- Adding serial holdings (including monographic series) to records in OCLC and RLIN
- Cataloging special and rare titles
- Making acquisition and in process records available beyond local environment
4.
Evaluating the needs of the Japanese Studies Librarian (Sachie Noguchi, University of Pittsburgh, and Amy Heinrich, Columbia University)
- Recruitment and mentoring of new professionals,
- Mid-career training needs.
5.
Serving the underserved (Sharon Domier, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Sally Hastings, Purdue University)
- Serving the research needs of individuals at institutions without adequate Japanese Studies collections and/or without a Japanese Studies librarian.
- Cooperative licensing of databases; providing Japanese language databases through online bibliographic utilities.
