Report of the NCC's 2009 Open Meeting Thursday, March 26th from 1:00 to 4:30 pm Sheraton Chicago Hotel

 

Copies of the Reports made at the meeting on March 26, 2009 can be found by clicking the relevant links.

NCC Chair Tokiko Y. Bazzell welcomed attendees and introduced the new members of the NCC Council: Keiko Yokota-Carter (University of Washington) currently Chair-Elect who will serve as Chair 2010-2012; Michael Bourdaghs (University of Chicago) NCC Humanities Faculty Representative and MVS Co-chair; Haruko Nakamura (Yale University) CEAL Representative; Peter Young (Chief of the Asian Division, Library of Congress) LC Representative; and Dawn Lawson (New York University) Digital Resources Committee Chair.

Tokiko asked everyone to please take a yellow sheet to make suggestions to NCC on future programs, especially programs to be developed during the third decade (2010-2020). She and NCC Executive Director Victoria Bestor outlined the overall Objectives of the Meeting. Greater detail on all aspects of the meeting are contained in Tokiko's detailed PowerPoint Outline Objectives of the Meeting linked on the NCC website.

Tokiko then introduced CEAL President Kristina Troost who served as NCC Chair from 1998-2000. Her talk Challenging the Past to Create the Future focused on the reasons for NCC's creation and outlined some key differences between NCC and CEAL historically as well as currently. Factors that she identified include NCC's mandate to serve faculty and librarians and the role of faculty (end-users) as outlined in NCC's bylaws. NCC works closely with funders, supports studies and surveys of the field, and develops strategies for meeting the needs of users in all regions, expressly those who do not have large collections or trained East Asian studies librarians.

NCC has a long and close relationship with the Japan-US Friendship Commission, which supports the NCC infrastructure; the reliability of funding streams, by providing staff support, facilitates long term planning as well as continuity. In particular, JUSFC funds an executive director who oversees projects, manages grants, and develops public information strategies to implement ideas developed by faculty and librarians. Being flexible to meet changing needs of the field is a guiding principle of NCC activities. NCC's strengths include its collaboration between scholars and libraries and the inclusive nature of NCC programs. NCC's Council includes both librarians and faculty elected from the field of Japanese studies as well as an elected Japan liaison that serves as a full voting member of the NCC and its official representative in Japan. In addition NCC has several full members who are appointed by the constituencies they represent. Currently those representatives come from the Library of Congress, the Northeast Asia Council [NEAC] of the AAS and the Council on East Asian Libraries [CEAL], also an AAS-related organization. In the past, appointed members also came from the Association of Research Libraries [ARL] and the Japan Foundation American Advisory Committee. NCC serves all those interested in Japan including faculty, students, librarians and the broader public.

During the past decade NCC has served as a model for other groups. For example, the Korean Collections Consortium was expressly modeled after then NCC, receiving ongoing funding from the Korea Foundation. NCC has also been very proactive in providing workshops regionally and nationally advertised broadly to users throughout the regions where workshops are offered. User needs are the driving influence in implementation of new NCC programs. NCC also evaluates all programs to design improvement and to discontinue services that have become redundant. (The full text of Kristina Troost's speech is linked above and is also published in the June 2009 issue of the Journal of East Asian Libraries, JEAL, Number 148.)

Tokiko Bazzell then introduced the major themes of the NCC's Third-Decade Conference, Continuing to do more with less, the NCC's Future Mission. Following up on Kris Troost's presentation, Tokiko Bazzell reiterated NCC's thanks to its funders, especially the Japan-US Friendship Commission. In addition the Japan Foundation, which until last year provided annual infrastructural support, has most recently given NCC an Institutional Project Support grant (for 2 years). Other recent funding has come from the Toshiba International Foundation, the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University, the Shibusawa Eiichi Memorial Foundation, and other institutions that support individual projects and events.

NCC Chair Tokiko Bazzell reviewed the composition of the NCC Council, explaining how members of the NCC Council and Committees are chosen. Elected members serve three years and include two faculty (a social scientist and a humanist), four librarians (including one who is designated as Digital Resources Committee Chair), the Japan Liaison, and the NCC Chair. Once in three years there is also a chair-elect who serves a one-year term prior to assuming the chair's three-year term. There are also three full members of the Council who are appointed by the organizations or constituencies they represent. Members are nominated by the field and/or by Council members. Recommendations are reviewed by NCC's Executive Committee and follow bylaw-mandated distribution by region of the country, size of library collections, and the size and specializations of the Japanese and East Asian studies programs of a candidate's institution. Once nominated for the Council candidates are contacted and asked if they are willing to stand among a slate of candidates. Election is by a 2/3rds majority of the full membership of the NCC Council.

Tokiko then asked Executive Director Vickey Bestor to review the objectives of NCC's Year 2000 Conference to provide background for the subsequent discussion of NCC programs during the last decade.

The principal goals of Year 2000 Conference were to plan NCC's second decade 2001- 2010 by:

Outcomes of the Year 2000 conference can be seen throughout NCC programs as summarized below.

The formal review of MVS produced:

Following Year 2000, the Japan Art Catalog Project succeeded in finding a home for the Western Art Collection at Columbia University. In 2007 the JAC II exchange with Japan was reinstituted with yearly shipments of US catalogs of Japanese art going to the National Art Center Tokyo.

User access services since Year 2000 have particularly focused on expanding efforts to help isolated and underserved scholars and students. Major project in those areas include:

Consortial Licensing Task Force -- Became the Digital Resources Committee

AskEASL (discontinued in 2007)

Following the overall theme of the meeting, NCC & YOU: Charting the Next Frontier, Looking Forward to the 3rd Decade (3-D), Tokiko then introduced the first panel:

Mission 1: Growing Distributed National Collections: The goal of the panel was to review NCC's cooperative collection programs and to discuss changes in those programs. The Multi-Volume Sets (MVS) Project was represented by committee co-chair Kuniko Yamada McVey and Tetsuro Suzuki, manager of the MVS project for Japan Publications Trading Co., Ltd, which coordinates the program in Japan. Reiko Yoshimura, Curator of the JAC Asian Collection at the Freer Gallery, and Sachie Noguchi of Columbia University represented the Japan Art Catalog Project from the JAC Western Art Catalog Collection housed in the Avery Art Library.

Questions particularly focused on the growing number of applications for MVS and their very diverse range for 2008-09. Ms. McVey noted that for the first time a multi-lingual set was funded and that also the MVS committee had encouraged a grantee to seek partial funding support from the private publisher of the sets they proposed. She also thanked the Library of Congress for their ongoing effort to purchase sets that cannot be funded by MVS due to the scarcity of funding. Given budget cuts at LC it is not clear whether they will be able to continue to fund such sets in the future.

JAC collects catalogs of Japanese art and Asian art exhibitions from Japan and Asian art titles in the Western art exhibitions continue to be an important and unique source for scholars. Reiko Yoshimura spoke of the glowing letters she has received for researchers who were able to complete important projects thanks to the resources of the JAC Asian Collection. The JAC Collection is available through ILL and borrowing continues to grow. Following the migration of RLN records to the OCLC system borrowing has increased further because of the greater electronic visibility of the JAC records.

Mission 2: Expanding Digital Resources in the Classroom: An update on the Japan Foundation-supported Electronic Resources Workshops was provided by Victoria Bestor. To date NCC has offered more than 60 e-resources workshops and seminars worldwide. Programs have included basic introductory presentations on materials on Japan in English; those focused on freely available digital resources on Japan in Japanese and other languages; workshops on specific topics such as legal resources, visual images, social science statistics, and resources for the study of science, technology and medicine; and hand-on sessions that provided instruction on the navigation and use of specific databases.

She also announced that the first Workshop on Image Use Protocol would be held at the University of Maryland College Park on April 30, 2009 in conjunction with the 30th anniversary of the Gordon W. Prange Collection. Further IUP Workshops will be held in July 2009 at the Japanese Studies Association of Australia and September 2009 at the European Association of Japanese Resources Specialists at the Sainsbury Institute in Norwich, England. During academic year 2009-10 NCC will cosponsor a series of IUP Workshops working with institutions throughout North America who propose programs for users in their region.

Tokiko Bazzell and Vickey Bestor introduced the NCC's new Faculty Forum program "Using Resources on the Front Line," which first took place at Princeton University in January 2009. Participants attended the faculty forum from 12 states and the District of Columbia. The Faculty Forum clearly demonstrated the need to more broadly promote NCC services and other free resources for research and teaching on Japan. Participants expressed the need for more programs to assist them in teaching undergraduates; these include more English language e-resources, and more materials providing assistance using films, e-books, and other new resources. Responses from participants were highly positive, and more programs in the series are planned. The next Faculty Forum will be held on October 22, 2009, at the University of Arizona in conjunction with the Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies.

Maureen Donovan discussed the Task Force on Connecting to Japan on the Web, which will recommend new program directions to the NCC and help in planning for the 3-D Conference. Because of the overflow of information more users need assistance in selecting information. Faculty members want to talk about their research needs with librarians, but often they do not know how to approach librarians. We must learn of their needs and bring plans/ideas to the NCC. The Task Force on Connecting to Japan on the Web will help the NCC to develop a website during the summer of 2009 in preparation for NCC's 3-D Conference in March 2010.

Mission 3: Learning Constantly, How Librarians Stay Ahead: was represented by Sachie Noguchi, co-chair of the Librarian Professional Development Committee, who asked the audience for future suggestions of training needs. In the absence of representatives from the National Institute for Informatics, only Mr. Kazuyuki Yamaguchi of the National Diet Library was present to represent Japanese collaborators in training efforts.

Audience members expressed the hope that a successor to the Japan Studies Information Specialists Training program will be created. The LPDC plans to develop a list of training opportunities to post on the LPDC webpage on the NCC site.

Online strategies for training were also discussed. Onsite trainings at NDL will be recorded and made available online. But the recorded materials will be available in Japanese only (no translation is planned). Participants expressed the view that remote training may be time consuming. It would be nice to have summaries of training programs available. NDL currently has no plans to publish summaries, but all training materials are downloadable. It would be beneficial if some sort of very basic NDL training were offered in English. Mr. Yamaguchi said there are no plans for English services at this point

Mission 4: Accessing Knowledge on Japan: Chiaki Sakai represented NCC's ILL/DD Committee, which manages the Global ILL Framework (GIF); NCC's Digital Resources Committee (DRC) was represented by its Chair Dawn Lawson; and the Image Use Protocol (IUP) Task Force, was represented by member Haruko Nakamura. Kazuyuki Yamaguchi again represented NDL with an NDL Presentation, and three representatives for NII were unable to attend but information on their programs was summarized and is available electronically, at NII Details.

Participants asked about future digitization plans at NDL. Mr. Yamaguchi noted that NDL digitalization projects have been thus far undertaken by NDL working alone without special funding from the Japanese government. Especially in science and technology only about 50% of the materials is digitalized. In Europe and North America 90% of such material is available digitally. NDL is aware of the need to improve the current situation in Japan and is trying to reach the 90% level through collaborations with JST, NII, the Ministry of Agriculture and other agencies.

Discussion focused on how we can encourage ILL staff to use GIF more. It was reported that some ILL staff tell users GIF is not available even when their institution is a member. Although GIF represents only a small portion of daily ILL requests, the GIF committee includes several ILL librarians who feel comfortable using GIF. The GIF committee continues to promote its use among ILL staff and applied for an ALA rethinking innovation award for its efforts. Further efforts will continue to expand the comfort level of ILL librarians in using GIF.

A participant asked if the DRC Committee could create some general instructional tutorial materials, which can be freely shared with everyone. It was reported that JapanKnowledge will create a tutorial; the creation of others will be explored as needed.

Haruko Nakamura presented an update on the NCC's Image Use Protocol project. Upon requests from users in 2007, the IUP task force was formed to develop guidelines for the use of visual images in teaching, research, and publications. To learn details of problems encountered, the task force conducted a survey in late 2007 and early 2008 receiving 120 detailed responses. By analyzing the results the task force identified problems. The principal issues included lack of knowledge of legal issues, lack of understanding of the differences in the publishing climate in the US and Japan, and communication problems largely stemming form cultural and linguistic issues.

The IUP held an international conference in Tokyo in June 2008 to further explore these issues. Attendees included representatives from museums, temples, manga and anime producers, librarians, and book publishers from Japan as well as librarians and scholars from the US, Canada, and Western Europe. The findings from the survey results were shared, and the presentations showed the large increase in the use of images in research in North America. Attendees shared their experience and problems with Japanese stakeholders. Japanese participants discussed the publications process for images in Japan and learned of key differences between the image-rights requirements of publishers in Japan and the US. An important difference is the universal requirement of foreign (especially US) publishers to require permission for all images that will be used in publications.

The IUP website has been launched and is being expanded. The website provides guidelines and templates for request letters and all materials are freely accessible online. The NCC will offer a series of IUP workshops in the coming year.

Being Ready for the 3-D Conference in 2010 was the subject of a brief discussion with Keiko Yokota-Carter, 3-D Conference Co-Chair, NCC Chair-Elect; Tokiko Y. Bazzell, 3-D Conference Co-Chair, NCC Chair; and Victoria Lyon Bestor, 3-D Conference Task Force, NCC Executive Director. Together they outlined plans for the conference, which will take place on March 22-23, 2010, at the University of Pennsylvania.

The NCC's Digital Resources Committee coordinated a panel of Japanese publishers and database vendors titled Dreaming of Japanese Information. Panelists included representatives from Asahi Shinbun, Japan Publications Trading Co., Ltd., Kinokuniya, Maruzen, Net Advance, Nihon Keizai Shinbun, Yagi Shoten, and Yomiuri Shinbun. Following brief presentations by each of the vendors the floor was opened to questions from the audience.

Related to the topic of consortial licensing, Fabiano Rocha expressed gratitude to Asahi Shinbun for being accommodating in allowing Canadian libraries (technically from a different region) to become members of a group with other American libraries to be able to get a group rate for subscribing to Kikuzo II. Library budgets are increasingly tight and it has now become more difficult to justify subscriptions to such expensive databases for a limited number of users. Consortially licensed packages will be much more attractive to libraries in times of budgetary restrictions.

It was pointed out that resources such as Yagi Shoten's Nihon Kindai Bungakukan can be accessed via a button on JapanKnowledge. Many users have expected to find this resource in their library, however, because of its high annual subscription fees, many institutions are unable to subscribe to it. Group rates should be made available, as the prices are prohibitive for libraries in North America.

It was further pointed out that because of the general decline in the economy vendors and publishers should anticipate cutbacks and cancellations in existing subscriptions. This is a time for vendors to be proactive and create packages that offer group rates even before they are requested.

A question was raised from the audience about limitations in access to specific databases. Many libraries require the cancellation of print versions of periodicals once an electronic version is subscribed to; however this can present a problem with back issues. For example, Shukan Asahi is one of the periodicals available through Kikuzo II, but only one-year of archived issues are available.

Another problem with the Asahi materials is that for many articles, the copyright has not been cleared from the original authors; hence access to the full-text article is often denied. Asahi was urged to proactively seek permission from authors to increase the accessibility to the resources they claim to make "available" through their electronic resources. The Asahi Shinbun representative expressed their willingness to bring these concerns back to the company and to sort out issues related to copyright clearance.

Another question that arose was whether NII could reconsider its policy of not allowing changes or addenda to the CiNii institutional license. In subsequent discussions, NII explained that they do not anticipate having the resources to allow them to change this policy in the foreseeable future. However, many full text articles are available free of charge from NII via CiNII, without the need for a license of any kind. Full text resources are also available from JAIRO, NII's Japanese Repositories Online, at http://jairo.nii.ac.jp/en/.

Professor Robin LeBlanc pointed out that many isolated scholars throughout North America have limited or no access to Japanese electronic resources through their home institutions. Small institutions where there may be one or two specialists cannot justify the subscription costs of online resources, especially those in languages other than English. Often prices are prohibitive even for institutions with strong and well-established East Asian programs. Professor LeBlanc suggested that vendors and publishers of electronic resources consider the creation of packages of electronic resources for individual scholars, who may be able to pay for a portion of the subscription costs using some of the research funding provided by their institution. She pointed out that although this may be seen as very "small business," there are many individuals and/or groups that could form small consortia, generating tremendous profits for vendors and publishers with the expansion of the user base.

This issue was further discussed by the DRC in its meeting and they agreed to further explore individual licensing options. Additional discussions were also held with individual vendors to further pursue this prospect. After the meeting, it was learned that several vendors already provide these options, and this information was sent to Japan and East Asian studies-related listservs. Links to individual subscription information are as follows.

For the Asahi Shimbun, http://www.kijisaku.com/info/rate.html
For CiNii, http://ci.nii.ac.jp/info/en/service_outline_prsn.html
For Japan Knowledge, http://www-beta.japanknowledge.com/common/member/general/kaihi.html
For the Yomiuri Shimbun, http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/bunshokan/personal.htm"

The note-takers for this meeting were Michiko Ito, Yoko Okunishi, Fabiano Rocha and Keiko Suzuki. NCC thanks them for their contributions to this report. The Japan-US Friendship Commission and The Japan Foundation provided funding support for the Open NCC Meeting. The Shibusawa Eiichi Memorial Foundation also provided in-kind support.