North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources
Summary of Meeting on January 11-12, 2008
C.V. Starr East Asian Library, University of California, Berkeley

 

Agenda

Copies of the Reports made at the meeting on January 11-12, 2008 can be found by clicking the relevant links.

Meeting Attendees:

Tokiko Yamamoto Bazzell, Chair, Victoria Bestor, Executive Director; members: Martin Collcutt, Maureen Donovan, Hitoshi Kamada, Robin Le Blanc, Susan Matisoff, Chiaki Sakai, Akio Yasue, and Keiko Yokota-Carter. Absent: Laura Hein and Tomoko Steen. Observers: Margaret Mihori represented the Japan-United States Friendship Commission; Mitsuhiro Inada represented the Japan Foundation, and Yuki Ishimatsu of the C.V. Starr East Asian Library University of California, Berkeley. NCC Staff: Yoko Okunishi.

Friday January 11, 2008

NCC Chair Tokiko Bazzell welcomed members and guests especially thanking UC Berkeley, its C.V. Starr East Asian Library and Center for Japanese Studies for their financial support in holding the meeting. She also introduced Mitsuhiro Inada of the Japan Foundation New York Office who was attending his first NCC Meeting. She then thanked Yuki Ishimatsu and Susan Matisoff for sharing Berkeley's rare books and maps. The Council members who attended the workshop on January 10th enjoyed the learning opportunity and appreciated Yuki and Susan's efforts.

Report from Funding Agencies:

Japan-United States Friendship Commission: Margaret Mihori noted that interest rates remain low and the weak dollar will continue to impact the JUSFC's grant making for the near term. Two positions on the Commission have been filled, Mr. Thierry Porte has become JUSFC Chairman and Dr. Robert Feldman has joined the Commission, both will serve on CULCON.

Japan-US Conference on Cultural and Education Interchange (CULCON): The CULCON Mission Statement Working Group summary was provided. It included (1) a report on the state of US-Japan cultural and educational exchange, (2) discussion of future directions of CULCON activities, and (3) preparation for CULCON XXIII. Margaret also provided information on the next CULCON meeting in Tokyo in June. The NCC Chair and Executive Director were invited to attend should their schedules in Japan fit. She also encouraged the NCC to send issues related to US and Japan information needs to the CULCON before the meeting.

The Japan Foundation report was given orally by Mitsuhiro Inada of the Japan Foundation New York Office. JF expects to have $400,000 for the Institutional Support Program (ISP) for 2008. They received 63 proposals for the prescreening in Oct, 2007 of which 17 institutions were selected. Among those 17, 2 institutions declined to submit applications and 1 institution was excluded, 14 applications remain. Those 14 included several colleges, universities, and organizations such as the NCC. The final screening will be conducted by the American Advisory Committee on January 26-27, 2008 and the result will be announced in March. Among the initial applications, a number of small colleges in the South submitted promising proposals and a separate competition was created to improve their activities in Japanese studies. A question was asked whether this separate competition was related to the JF's "small institution support grants," to which Mr. Inada clarified that this was separate from the existing grant program.

Reports from NCC Representatives from Collaborating Organizations:

Martin Collcutt gave an oral report on the activities of Northeast Asia Council (NEAC) encouraging NCC to spread information among librarians about applying for NEAC travel grants for the mid-February deadline.

He also addressed NEAC's perception that in the US Japanese studies in declining both in real numbers and vis-à-vis Korean and Chinese. During the previous 20 year Korean studies was smaller and less developed than Japanese studies, today there is a flood of Korean students and money into the field. NEAC itself will receive more Korean money and the number of Koreanists on NEAC will increase. Many schools are expanding the global student presence on campus, however, while the numbers of Chinese and Korean students and programs is clearly expanding, the presence of Japanese students is decreasing. NEAC is anxious to compile statistics to evaluate this trend. Some major universities (including Harvard) are already aware of this problem and trying to devise solutions.

The Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL) and the Committee of Japanese Materials (CJM) Report was given by CJM Chair Keiko Yokota-Carter.

The Library of Congress (LC) Report was given by Eiichi Ito who has been designated as alternate LC representative until a permanent successor to Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee is named. Dr. Lee will retire from LC at the end of February 2008; full details are contained in the LC Report.

The Japan Liaison Report was as presented with discussion by Akio Yasue. The integration of digital content in Japan still presents problems however NDL has recently created a new portal site, PORTA facilitating search across 20 different databases including the National Archives of Japan, Aozora Bunko, and others. NII is supporting the development of institutional repositories (IR's) among Japanese universities. NDL and NII are working to eventually create a combined search of all such databases. Under Dr. Nagao's leadership, NDL's digitalization projects are expanding with support from the Japanese government however those efforts face legal registration and copyright issues.

Chiaki Sakai presented the ILL/DD Committee Report. She announced that new analysis reveals that the successful GIF request rate was much higher than originally thought. According to initial fiscal year 2005 statistics, North American participants sent about 650 requests to Japan, but only more than one-third were confirmed. However, this number measures the quantity of transactions or total requests. Often a given request may list more than one potential supplier which holds the requested material. If, for example, the first two libraries cannot supply the material but the third library does the transaction is successful. Previous statistics counted these as three separate requests, two failures and one success. Another possible source of errors may be found in the differing systems used by OCLC and NII in handling such strings of requests. The committee will further examine raw data and report at the NCC Open Meeting in Atlanta. It was asked whether more institutions such as Kindai Bungakukan might become members of GIF. Chiaki answered that some institutions including Kindai Bungakukan do not meet all the GIF criteria in Japan. She will double check with the Japan team regarding the most recent GIF membership criteria and report back later. She may solicit further input on this subject from the floor at the NCC Open Meeting in Atlanta. The ILL/DD Committee will again have a poster session at the Japan Foundation reception in conjunction with the AAS/CEAL meetings and invited other NCC projects to take part. For the last two years the JF reception has proved to be an excellent opportunity to reach-out to faculty.

During the working lunch Peter Zhou, Director of UC Berkeley's C.V. Starr East Asian Library spoke about the changing mission of libraries. Clearly the transition to a paperless future is underway but Dr. Zhou believes there will be a long hybrid period when both paper based resources and the virtual paperless library will coexist (library 1.0 refers to the traditional analog-based, facility-dense library and library 2.0 to the open web-based, paperless, interacting, 24/7 library). The latter form has already transformed some fields of scholarship notably engineering and the sciences. However in the humanities and social sciences the combination of Library 1.0 and Library 2.0 will continue for some time. Even the strongest technology and digital collections cannot fully integrate civilization, culture, people, and country data as represented in the Library 1.0 environment. This is where specialized collections like East Asian Libraries remain very valuable and where aggregation cannot simply be implemented by technology.

The new C.V. Starr East Asian library is a fully hybrid library, combining Library 1.0 and 2.0; its building is full of wireless technology, document cameras, digitalization facilities, a media center, and a wealth of valuable books and prints. More than a place for books and digital resources, a library must be a place of ideas where interaction and academic communication occur, a place of culture and learning experience. The key to managing libraries in the hybrid period is its people. Subject librarians must be multi-tasker. They must interact more closely with faculty, navigate web scholarship, create finding aides, assist with research, and become border crossers. A research library used to be more like a factory, with distinct industrial production, cutting processes into pieces, separating the work into small modules. That system produced many people with narrow specializations who did not see the whole picture. In the library 2.0 world the challenge is to determine the best process and organizational structure to manage more knowledge than in the past. In closing Dr. Zhou noted that the NCC plays an important role in helping East Asian libraries undertake these transitions, to help East Asian Libraries negotiate their needs to keep Library 1.0 vigorous while moving toward Library 2.0.

The Multi-Volume Sets (MVS) Project Report was presented by co-chairs Eiichi Ito and Susan Matisoff.

Co-chair Maureen Donovan presented the Librarian Professional Development Committee (LPDC) Report.

In her absence Tomoko Steen's Digital Resources Committee (DRC) Report was presented in written form.

Tokiko Bazzell and Victoria Bestor discussed The Final Report on the E-Resources Training Initiatives. The three-year project resulted in the training of 33 librarians, the presentation of 57 workshops over a two-year period (offered internationally), the creation of the Information Literacy Portal, and the development of a pilot interactive tutorial on the GIF project designed by Dawn Lawson of NYU.

Japan Art Catalog Project (JAC) Reports were presented in written form from Reiko Yoshimura, Sachie Noguchi, and Mariko Shiratori of NACT.

An update on The Image Use Protocol Task Force (IUP) with discussion was provided by Robin Le Blanc and Victoria Bestor. The task force met for the first time at Harvard on August 29th and has since conducted a survey posted on the NCC Website that received 87 very detailed responses. The survey will be open for one more month with broader international advertising and results will be presented at the NCC Open Meeting.

The task force plans to meet with Japanese publishers and image owners on June 23, 2008 in Tokyo and has requested support from the Japan Foundation, the Toshiba International Foundation (TIFO), and the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University. Japanese stakeholders will be asked to provide their input to help IUP create guidelines to best practices for using images from Japan accompanied by bilingual permission-request templates, and lists of image banks and other important sites. An article in Japanese about the August meeting has already been published by Izumi Koide at the Shibusawa Zaidan in their newsletter Seien, no. 704 Nov. 2007.

NCC Administrative Reports:

Tokiko Bazzell presented the Chair's Report detailing her recent meetings in Tokyo.

Vickey Bestor discussed NCC Administration, Publications and Public Information Efforts. The NCC Council Handbook, 2nd ed. was distributed and will be available online at the NCC website in searchable form. For AAS a new issue of The NCC Newsletter and a bookmark with NCC URLs will be produced. If economically feasible copies of the GIF tutorial on DVD will be made available at AAS.

Saturday, January 12, 2007

New Business, Future Meetings, Projects and Discussion Items:

A written Report by the Executive Committee on the Nominations for Humanities Faculty Representative was discussed followed by an election. Michael Bourdaghs of the University of Chicago was elected to a term from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2011.

Discussion on NCC Application to Japan Foundation: Due to Japan Foundation's restructuring the kind of funding the NCC has previously received for meetings and operations will likely be discontinued. If its funding from JF is cut NCC may not be able to hold two working meetings annually. This situation may also demand that the Executive Director focus more of her efforts on fund-raising at the expense of program management and implementation. In light of this situation the Council reviewed the NCC Mission statement and reaffirmed mission priorities.

In the context of NCC's larger strategic planning, the Council strongly reaffirmed NCC priorities as outlined in its Mission Statement (revised in January 2006). However the Council felt it necessary to articulate contingency plans to be implemented if administrative funding cutbacks occur during FY 2008-09, before NCC has been able to complete its strategic planning and accompanying reforms. Should administrative funding be cut, the Council has directed the NCC to delay undertaking new programming in its third program area, that of librarian and user training and to temporarily limit NCC programs to ongoing projects in the NCC's first two priority areas; user access services and cooperative collection development. This means that the NCC's ILL/DD project known as GIF (the Global ILL Framework), its Digital Resources Committee's projects; and the work of the Image Use Protocol Task Force, to be completed by early 2009, will proceed as planned. In addition NCC's cooperative collection development project, the Multi-Volume Sets Project [fully funded by the JUSFC], and the Japan Art Catalog Project [which operates independently of the NCC with the three collections each shouldering their own administrative expenses] will also continue unchanged and under their own steam.

However if infrastructural cuts are experienced for FY 2008-09 the Council felt that all NCC staff efforts will need to focus on administrative management and new and expanded fund-raising efforts, and has directed NCC to delay further planning and implementation of independent or collaborative training programs for librarians, faculty and students. Therefore it was the Council's view that NCC should suspend (at least temporarily) any plans to expand activities in its third major mission priority, librarian and user training. Training has always been a major area of NCC interest and we hope that NCC will again be able to lend its considerable expertise to the management of such programs, however for the time being, until funding is clearly known, the Council has directed the NCC to hold-back on any efforts to plan or organize international training initiatives including those which has been discussed with the National Diet Library.

In its effort to think more broadly about fund-raising a number of possible options were discussed. Council members suggested that NCC approach East Asian studies centers, explaining the NCC's financial situation and asking their support as an extension of their outreach efforts. Within the context of such a solicitation of major centers several possible issues were raised: 1) Will it be more difficult for NCC to preserve its mandate of serving smaller institutions if it receives support from large libraries and/or East Asia programs which might expect more direct local programming in return for their funding support? 2) Would such fund-raising efforts by NCC be perceived as threatening to consortia such as AsiaNetwork, CTA (Committee for Teaching on Asia), or ATJ (the Association of Teachers of Japanese)? 3) Will NCC Council members be presented with any conflicts of interest if NCC approaches their universities? And 4) Would any of these efforts create enemies in the field? Taking these possible factors into consideration the Council recommended that NCC begin a campaign among leading American universities to seek their support for NCC as part of their broader outreach mission to the field. Initial solicitations should be directed toward Harvard's Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies (which has provided support to NCC for the last 5 years) as well as to Yale, Princeton, and potentially the other institutions often counted among the "Tanaka Ten."

Created as it was by a pair of funders (the JUSFC and the Japan Foundation) the NCC is a service organization with a unique structure and underpinnings. Over the years NCC's activities have grown considerably in response to demand from faculty, students and librarians in the field. However the NCC still relies heavily on the in-kind donation of the Executive Director and Council Members, especially the Executive Committee whose role continues to grow. Such a heavily volunteer-dependent structure cannot be sustained by an organization over the long term. Within any future fund-raising plans there must be those that focus on establishing an infrastructure that can continue without such heavy pro bono commitments on the part of staff who donate a portion of their time and the limited pool of professionals who volunteer their time.

The more NCC receives requests to develop special activities and serve new needs, the more NCC needs a solid infrastructure. While some NCC projects such as the Image Use Task Force have a specific goal and a clear timeline for completion, many projects NCC is asked to undertake, such as the GIF Project and the Digital Resources Committee, are ongoing in nature. Other projects, which have been completed, such as the E-Resources Initiative and the Junior Librarians Training Seminar, continue to be in demand. Receiving funding for ongoing projects is more difficult than for one-time or short-term projects. Regardless of the nature of NCC programs, a secure infrastructure is needed for the future.

NCC is also being asked to do more of a collaborative nature. The Council has recommended that NCC defer major planning on collaborative projects such as creating a successor to the JSIST program. Council members asked about alternative providers of specialized training. A great deal of generic training is available within academic and research libraries or through professional groups such as ALA or ACRL. Similarly CEAL and institutions with special collections such as Tenri University are well placed to offer extremely specialized training on subjects such as metadata and rare books and documents. NCC's strengths are in offering aggregate or comprehensive training and in developing new Japan-focused training such as the T-3 information literacy instructor's workshops. NCC continues to receive requests from East Asian librarians, who are not Japan specialists but who serve Japanese studies faculty and students. NCC is perhaps the best organization to create programs for such an audience.

Within the context of future training efforts the question was raised as to what roles the NCC should take in assisting in the development of a successor program to JSIST. The JSIST program is known to build good relationship among Japanese studies librarians who work together over the three-week program. Compared to professional development opportunities offered in-house, which are not designed for librarians who handle highly specialized resources, only JSIST provides such in-depth opportunities to learn Japanese resources. One member commented that as it currently exists JSIST is beneficial principally to institutions that house Japanese studies librarians. In smaller institutions where there are no Japanese studies librarians, the direct benefits of JSIST may be limited.

Over the years the JSIST program forged a stronger relationship between NCC and NDL. While NDL and I-House support the development of this type of program, neither institution can initiate the program. The NCC is the most logical and experienced organization to carry out that task. If Japan Foundation is willing to fund a successor program to JSIST NCC can work with NDL and IHJ as co-sponsors. To include librarians from other parts of the world it will be important to work with regional groups similar to the way the Tenri Workshops have been coordinated. NCC is currently hoping to be able to meet with NDL, IHJ and with European colleagues in June 2008 to further discuss development of new training programs. Similarly, if European or Australian groups initiate programs NCC can be the coordinator for North American participants. Depending on the focus of programs, other organizations and groups may take the initiative. For example, an archives workshop might involve Japanese studies librarians but also archivists, researchers, and other specialists. If such programs are held in Japan it may be necessary to hire someone to act as local on-site coordinator. It may be more advantageous to offer training in the US and to invite the instructors from Japan.

Tokiko Bazzell discussed plans for the 2008 Open Meeting in Atlanta (Thursday, April 3rd from 1:00 to 5:00.) There will be three guest speakers from Japan: Atsuhiko Wada of Waseda University who recently published a book on Japanese collection in North America, Shohei Muta of the National Archives of Japan and speakers from NII who will talk about the development of the institutional repositories in Japan.

The next NCC Working Meeting is tentatively planned for August 2008 to be hosted by Tokiko Bazzell at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. The timing is planned to follow the International Federation of Library Associations' (IFLA) meeting. After confirming IFLA's schedule and satellite meetings, Tokiko Bazzell will finalize the meeting dates.

Since Japan Foundation funding for next fiscal year is unknown it is not clear if there will be funding for a January 2009 Meeting. If possible the January 2009 meeting will be held at Princeton University hosted by Martin Collcutt. Princeton would also be an ideal venue for holding a faculty focus group bringing faculty from throughout the region to discuss their research and resource needs (if such a focus group were to take place Martin Collcutt agreed to coordinate it).

At the conclusion of the meeting, Tokiko Bazzell thanked Susan Matisoff for her contributions as a member of the Council for the last three years and also on the NCC Executive Committee and as co-chair of the MVS Committee.