Report on the meeting of the North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina January 7-8, 2005

 

Copies of the Reports made at the January 2005 NCC Meeting can be found by clicking the highlighted sections in Red or by following the URLs included.

Present: Toshie Marra, Chair, Victoria Bestor, Executive Director; members: Sharon Domier, Tomoko Goto, Mary Jackson, Hwa-Wei Lee, Kenji Niki, Eiko Sakaguchi, Mike Smitka, Kristina Troost, Syun Tutiya; Keiji Shono represented the Japan Foundation, and observers: Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs, Duke University; and Helene Baumann, Librarian for the African and Western European Collections, Duke University. Absent: Sally Hastings and Samuel Yamashita.

Toshie Marra, Chair, brought the meeting to order and asked Japan Foundation American Advisory Committee representative Kristina Troost to introduce her Duke colleagues. Deborah Jakubs, the new University Librarian, welcomed the NCC on behalf of Duke University. Helene Baumann, Duke's Librarian for the African and Western European Collections, also spoke about her participation in the AAU/ARL Global Resources Network's African and German projects.

Japan Foundation

Deputy Director General Keiji Shono (New York Office) reported briefly on the Japan Foundation noting that adjustments are still being made to the Foundation's new status as an independent administrative agency. They expect there to continue to be severe budget cuts in the range of 10-20% in the coming year. He also noted that the Japan Studies Information Specialists Training Program (JSIST) in November and December 2004 completed the final year of its second phase with four US librarians taking part. The future of that program is still unclear however the participants in the last program very strongly encouraged its continuation, as did the NCC in a letter of support written in October 2004 to Japan Foundation President Kazuo Ogoura.

Questions were raised about the anticipated funding available for library support grants, which will continue to be very tight, according to Mr. Shono. He was asked if he could provide an update at the next NCC meeting on the status of the Japan Foundation libraries in the wake of budget cutting. Mr. Shono also announced that it is expected the Japan Foundation New York office will move during the summer to space on a lower floor of the building they currently occupy. For more information about the Japan Foundation please visit their web site at http://www.jfny.org.

In the absence of a representative from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission a written report from Executive Director Eric Gangloff was reviewed. The most important was the announcement of the move of their offices to 1201 15th Street Suite 330, Washington DC 20005. The telephone numbers and email addresses of Commission staff remain the same. For information on their most recent round of grants and further information on the JUSFC visit http://www.jusfc.gov.

Reports from NCC Representatives from Collaborating Organizations and Constituencies

Kuniko Yamada McVey gave her last report as Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL) representative. The main item for discussion was the 2005 CJM Annual Session, to be held on Thursday March 31, 2005, between 8:30 am and 10:30 am in Chicago. The final CJM and CEAL schedules are now available on the CEAL web site. The program includes presentations by Taketoshi Yamamoto (Professor, Waseda University) on "Online Index to Japanese magazines in the Prange Collection," a yet to be announced presentation by the National Institute for Informatics including a "GeNii updates and new developments at NII," and a presentation by Hisayuki Ishimatsu (Japanese bibliographer, UC, Berkeley) on "Japanese Historical Maps Digitized." In addition she will make a presentation titled "Japanese studies librarianship: where are we heading?" The CJM session schedule will be posted on the CJM web site at http://dizzy.library.arizona.edu/users/hkamada/CJM/cjmhome.html.

Kuniko also reported on plans for the CEAL Plenary session scheduled on March 30, 2005 which will feature the presentation titled "Development of East Asian Collection in Australia" by Ms. Amelia McKenzie, Director of Asian Collection in National Library of Australia. In 2005 CEAL will also hold elections for six new committee chairs and two member-at-large. The Nomination committee includes Bob Felsing, chair, Sharon Domier, and Wooseob Jeong. Finally she announced that the CEAL executive board is discussing how to participate in IFLA 2006 in Seoul; members Joy Kim and Philip Melzer will be the liaisons between CEAL and the Korean National Library in those efforts. She ended with a note of appreciation for the close collaboration between CJM and the NCC over the past three years and expressed her hope that her successor as CJM chair will continue to work closely with the NCC.

Kristina Troost, representative for the Japan Foundation AAC, noted that there is nothing new to report on behalf of the AAC because its annual meeting in New York is later in January. She commented that based on her review of the Japan Foundation Library Support applications there may still be some need for further clarification of the Japan Foundation library support grant categories because some applicants seem to be applying in the wrong categories.

The Library of Congress (LC) report, given by Hwa-Wei Lee, Chief of the Asian Division, focused on four points: 1) Eiichi Ito of the Asian Division has just completed the three-week Japan Studies Information Specialist Training Program in Japan; 2) LC's collaboration with Nichibunken on the digitization of Japanese rare books continues smoothly; 3) two microfilming projects are moving forward: one Nan’yōchō 南洋庁, a collection of Japanese pre-war official documents from the South Sea Islands (Mandated Territory of Japan), was resumed after a delay due to funding and the Nichi Bei Times, 日米タイムズ, one of only a few bilingual Japanese American newspapers was completed in five reels; and, 4) finally Dr. Lee attended the International Symposium on Northeast China and Japan, 22269;際シンポジュウム「中国東北と日本－資料の現状と課題」 held at Niigata University on October 28-30, 2004 where he presented a paper, "Historical Resources on Northeast China and Japan in the Library of Congress."

Mary Jackson announced that the detailed report for the Association of Research Libraries was still being prepared for the American Library Association (ALA) meeting the following week. The ARL report is now available on the ARL web site at http://www.arl.org/collectaccess/. She announced that Karla Hahn has been selected to be ARL's Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication. She also noted that ARL is now engaged in a strategic planning process and further details of that can also be found on the ARL web site at http://www.arl.org/arl/strategic_taskforces/index.html. She expects that following full adoption of new ARL priorities some activities will be eliminated; one that has been mentioned is ILL.

She briefly discussed ARL's effort to understand the extent of holdings and overlaps among research libraries. The project, in cooperation with the OCLC Office of Research, has taken a sample of records from the OCLC WorldCat database. Using preliminary data, categorization of countries that might change slightly, she gave some very interesting snapshots of statistics. Contrary to expectations there appears not to be much duplication of holdings for many world areas. For example for European collections there are 3.75 copies per title held in ARL libraries, for Asia it is only 2.65 copies per title, and for Japan only 1.4 copies per title among ARL libraries. She noted that when all libraries included in WorldCat are counted, the number for Japan jumps to 2.88 copies per title. Members pointed out that the difference might be largely a result of the inclusion of Waseda University's holdings in WorldCat. Mary will send the URL to the final report on the project when it is available.

No report was given on behalf of the Northeast Asia Council of the AAS in the absence of NEAC representative Samuel Yamashita who was prevented from attending the NCC meeting due to the conflict with the meetings of the American Historical Association (AHA).

Japan Liaison, Syun Tutiya, discussed new changes brought to Japanese national university libraries by hojin-ka. He stressed that the importance of Japanese librarians continuing to work closely with faculty on library purchases has increased. He also announced that Mr. Sasakawa of Tokyo University Library is currently conducting a survey to gauge the potential for digitizing materials held in Japanese collections that are not widely known or available elsewhere.

He also spoke about the Global ILL Framework (GIF) project and the need to develop stable and direct communications among practitioners in Japanese and North American libraries. The idea of a GIF users-group was further discussed and was explored more extensively in the GIF report later in the agenda. The Japan side is attempting to set aside some funds to send representatives to meet with counterparts in the US. It was proposed that, if possible, someone from Japan might come to the AAS meetings in Chicago to join with NCC representatives in a small planning meeting in preparation for activities at the June 2005 ALA Meeting in Chicago and at the 2006 CJM or NCC Meeting.

Toshie Marra's Report on Chair's Recent Activities included a summary of what she learned at the Japan Studies Information Specialists Training Program which she participated in as one of 17 program participants. She especially noted that NDL's website archiving project known as WARP will be continued, and NDL's Collaborative Reference Database Project might be of interest to North American libraries as the database contains 11,000 records of reference transactions collection by approximately 150 participating libraries, which will be open to the public beginning in April 2005. Regarding WARP, she suggested that members let NDL hear of sites that definitely need to be archived.

Toshie also reported on the changes in administration of the Japan Art Catalog (JAC) Project in Japan. The over 20,000 Japanese art catalogs originally housed at ACE Japan have been transferred to the National Art Center in Tokyo which will continue the JAC Project. The National Art Center, Tokyo is scheduled to open in Roppongi in January 2007.

Toshie also briefly discussed plans for the Open Meeting including the plan for an evening session with Japanese publishers and vendors. More about the Open Meeting was discussed at the end of the meeting.

The Executive Director's Administrative Reports were given by Victoria Bestor and included a Semi-Annual Financial Update and presentation of the NCC's Proposed Infrastructural Budget for FY 2005-2006. She also reported on new procedures for financial review being put into place (more on this later in the report related to the proposal for the creation of an Executive Committee.) Vickey also gave a report on NCC Public Information Efforts including an Update on NCC Website and electronic JLTS Workbook, the NCC Newsletter, and JEAL publication schedule for NCC Meeting Reports. The Council also reviewed the draft of the NCC's new expanded brochure and made suggestions about content. The brochure will be ready for circulation at the AAS Meeting in Chicago.

NCC Committee and Task Force Updates

Michael Smitka gave the report on the Personnel Task Force, which also includes Sharon Domier. The task force has worked closely with Toshie Marra and Vickey Bestor to revise personnel policies, discussed possible by-laws changes, and reviewed plans for completion of the Council Handbook. As part of the discussion, Toshie Marra presented a proposal for the creation of an Executive Committee which was discussed briefly but, due to the lateness of the day, the final vote by the Council was deferred until Saturday.

The report of the Nominating Committee was discussed and the committee was congratulated on the excellent slate of candidates who have agreed to stand for Council positions. Based on the Council's review of candidates for the NCC humanities faculty representative and the new Digital Resources Coordinator the Council recommended that Susan Matisoff of UC Berkeley serve as the next humanities faculty representative and Tomoko Steen of the Science and Technology Division of Library of Congress become the new Digital Resources Coordinator. They will fill positions being vacated by Sally Hastings of Purdue University and Tomoko Goto of the University of British Columbia respectively. The terms for both those positions officially begin on July 1, 2005 and runs until June 30, 2008. Philip Brown of Ohio State University was also elected to serve on the MVS Committee in the faculty slot being vacated by Susan Matisoff who is becoming co-chair of that committee. Toshie and Vickey will collaborate on contacting the newly elected members as well as others who stood as candidates for those positions.

Because he would not be able to attend the Saturday portion of the meeting Michael Smitka gave a brief report on the Regional Training Network Steering Committee which he Co-chairs. The committee has been created to support the NCC's efforts to develop a series of electronic resource workshops in various parts of the country. The RTN committee is made up of faculty and librarians all of whom are also involved in regional conferences and seminars within the fields of Japanese and/or Asian studies. Mike also noted that he expected to meet with his Co-chair, Frank Chance, in Philadelphia on his return from the NCC meeting.

Kristina Troost, Co-chair of the Training the Trainers (T-3) Committee, made her report which included a review of the successful T-3 Workshop which took place at UCLA in August 2004 and plans for the T-3 Workshop which followed the NCC Meeting at Duke. With the completion of the Duke workshop, 33 Japanese and East Asian studies librarians will have completed the T-3 training program.

A report was given on the drafting of the E-Resources Training Workshops grant application. Vickey also announced that, the first of the up to 10 workshops to take place during Japan Foundation fiscal year 2005-06 has been firmly scheduled to take place at the meeting of the ASIANetwork at Whittier College on April 21, 2005. The workshops will be co-taught by Hitoshi Kamada of the University of Arizona and Yunshan Ye of Macalester College, both graduates of the T-3 training program. She also reported that supplemental funding for the E-Resource Training Workshops has been received from Harvard's Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies for regional workshops to be held at Harvard, and from the Society for East Asian Anthropology for a workshop to be held in conjunction with the 2005 AAA Meeting in Washington DC. The project will also develop an electronic discussion list of trainers and develop a section on user-training resources on the NCC website.

Japan Art Catalog Project written reports were received from Reiko Yoshimura, Freer and Sackler Galleries of Art, curator of the JAC Asian Art Collection and Hiroyuki Good, University of Pittsburgh and interim curator of the Western Art Catalog Depository. As requested by Reiko Yoshimura, the standards for cataloging JAC Project materials were discussed. The Council recommended that the two curators make a proposal regarding the appropriate standards that their institutions should apply in cataloging JAC Project materials and present it to the Council for its approval at the next meeting.

Tomoko Goto gave a report on the Japan-Related Information Specialists in Canada which included the activities of various individual members of the group and the announcement of the coming 5th annual meeting at the offices of the Japan Foundation in Toronto on January 29th.

Sharon Domier offered the report on behalf of the AskEASL Advisory Committee noting that the project has become rather static and new online references resources may have superceded the need for the EASL project. AskEASL, which grew from the NCC's Year 2000 Conference, has been a collaboration of CEAL and NCC since 2000. Vickey Bestor and Toshie Marra will write CEAL recommending that the AskEASL project be reexamined to determine whether there is an ongoing need for the project in light of larger and more widely used electronic reference services offered by the Library of Congress and other research and public libraries. If the AskEASL project comes to an end, the NCC will use of materials contained on the site to develop new electronic materials for user-training being developed in conjunction with the E-Resources Training Workshops.

During the report on the AAU/ARL/NCC Japan Project the previous day's discussion on ways to develop closer communications among members of the GIF project on both sides of the Pacific was continued. Ideas that were discussed included the creation of an electronic users-group of GIF participants, and the collaborative development of presentations at major meetings such as ALA and CEAL. To assist with GIF and other such efforts it was recommended that the NCC create an ILL/DD Committee. Sharon Domier will co-chair the committee at least temporarily with Toshie and Vickey serving ex officio and Mary Jackson acting as an advisor to the committee. Other Japanese and East Asian studies librarians and ILL librarians involved in GIF will be asked to join the committee. Japan Project Advisory Committee Co-chair Eiko Sakaguchi noted that there was nothing new to report.

The Multi-Volume Sets (MVS) Project Report was given by committee member Haruko Nakamura of Yale University who was present due to the absence of Co-chair Sally Hastings. The report focused on the recently completed pre-screening process and also discussed plans for the MVS Meeting in February. Toshie's recent discussions with JPT (Japan Publications Trading Company) regarding their offer to assist in checking costs and title availability at the pre-screening stage was also discussed. The MVS Committee will be asked to recommend the process for checking with JPT at the pre-screening stage at their upcoming meeting. The MVS Committee will also be assisting in the development of an MVS brochure.

An MVS application strategy session will be part of the NCC 2005 Open Meeting. Reiko Yoshimura will lead that presentation and will be assisted by the two other librarian members of the MVS Committee, Haruko Nakamura and Naomi Kotake. Toshie will discuss the presentation with Reiko in the coming weeks. It is expected that the redesigned, searchable MVS database will be up on the NCC site in the coming months.

No report was given on Digital Resources Committee which is currently in transition.

New Business, Future Meetings, Projects and Discussion Items

Tokiko Bazzell's request for the NCC's co-sponsorship of the Shashi Roundtable to take place on April 2, 2005 at AAS was discussed and endorsed by the Council.

The Council then returned to its discussion of Toshie's proposal for creation of an Executive Committee. The Council unanimously accepted her report in principle with the request that Toshie and Vickey clarify the process for selecting Executive Committee members and directed them to propose a process for selecting the first members with staggered terms, and provide the Council with suggestions for candidates. That process will be completed by mid-February by electronic discussion. The Executive Committee will begin to function immediately thereafter and terms will officially begin at the start of the new fiscal year on July 1, 2005.

The Council also unanimously accepted Vickey's proposal for creation of an ad-hoc task force composed of Mary Jackson, Kenji Niki, Mike Smitka, Kristina Troost, to assist with the completion of the Council Handbook and endorsed her proposed timeline for completion by June 2006. To that end Vickey was asked to present a first draft of the handbook to the Council at the next meeting in September 2005, the task force will advise upon suggested revisions and expansions between then and the January 2006 meeting at which time the Council would be expected to approve the document for official adoption at the beginning of the next fiscal year, as of July 1, 2006.

Details of the agenda for the NCC 2005 Open Meeting, which will be held from 1-4 pm on April 1, 2005 were discussed. The agenda will include a review of MVS application procedure, a brief presentation on GIF, reports on the Japan Studies Information Specialists Training Program, and a DRC session led by DRC Chair Tomoko Steen. Details about the Open Meeting and NCC's vendor's forum, also on April 1, 2005 will be posted on Eastlib by the end of January. The NCC will also develop a flyer about the vendor's forum for distribution at AAS.

It was proposed that the September 2005 NCC Meeting take place at the University of Michigan on September 16-17, 2005 and that the January 2006 Meeting again be held at the Library of Congress on January 13-14, 2006, both pending confirmation of availability of Council members not present at this meeting.

At the conclusion of the meeting Toshie Marra thanked outgoing NCC Council members Kuniko Yamada McVey (Harvard University) who completes her term as CEAL representative after the 2005 AAS Meetings, Tomoko Goto (University of British Columbia), and humanities faculty member Sally Hastings (Purdue University), who was unable to attend. Goto's and Hastings's terms end on June 30, 2005.

Copies of the Reports made at the January 2005 NCC Meeting can be found by clicking the highlighted sections in Red or by following the URLs included.