Beyond the Beginning: The Global Digital Library

THE DIGITAL LIBRARY IN JAPAN

TAMIKO MATSUMURA [39]

Professor, University of Library and Information Science, Japan

ABSTRACT

The present paper attempts to provide a brief overview on the current electronic digital library projects in Japan. The definitions of the terms "electronic library" and "digital library" are rather confusing and even more so when the Japanese translation is involved. The projects discussed in this presentation are those which claim to be related to either "electronic" or "digital" libraries. A number of projects are described, and key statistics are given. Finally important Japanese government policy documents are listed, and the overall expenditure in this area is summarised.

THE PILOT ELECTRONIC LIBRARY PROJECT

In June 1993 the Council on Industrial Structure, Information Industry Committee, recommended that the introduction of information technology into the public sector should be promoted actively as a policy of MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry). In the second and third supplementary budgets for fiscal 1993, MITI appropriated a total of ¥7.45 billion to the IPA (Information Processing Technology Promotion Agency) to carry out projects in four areas. The four areas were:

• Multimedia support for Manpower development;
• Pilot electronic library;
• Database for creation of new industries;
• Development of educational software.

For the first area, the Multimedia Research Centre was opened in September 1993, in the Nagano prefecture. For the other three areas, the Information Infrastructure Centre was founded on the Shonan campus of Keio University which was also opened in 1993. The This Centre carried out three projects, one of which is the Pilot Electronic Library Project. This project in turn consists of two sub projects: the union catalogue network project, and the electronic library demonstration experiment.

Union Catalogue Network Project

This project aims to develop a union catalogue network among public libraries, based on a common format using Japan/MARC and the INS64 network. At present 27 public libraries are participating and the holdings of 18 libraries are represented, amounting to 7.6 million bibliography records in February 1997.

Electronic Library Demonstration Experiment Project

This project is developing a prototype involvement in order to conduct various experiments for envisaged electronic library, by creating a large quantity of digitised data from various information sources. It employs a hierarchical storage system and an experimental NTT Multimedia connection. Budget appropriations for this project were ¥1.75 billion in fiscal 1993 and ¥0.91 billion in fiscal 1995. A total of nearly 9.5 million pages of materials were digitised including, from the National Diet Library holdings:

• 7,100 sheets of rare materials including 1,236 coloured wood block prints of Ukiyoe and Nishikie, and old maps from the Edo Period. These were digitised in colour at a high resolution (5,000 x 4,000 dpi );
• publications in social sciences from the Meiji Period, digitised in monochrome (21,000 volumes consisting of 6 million pages);
• 3,000 titles of books published during World War II;
• 24 titles of current Japanese journals from January 1980 to December 1994, amounting to approximately one million pages;
• 260 volumes (6,000 pages) of NDL research materials on deliberations in the Diet;
• 7,000 items of modern Japanese political history documents of Mishima Tsuyo in the Meiji Period. These were digitised as monochrome images, except for the bibliography and annotation which were converted to text data;
• 1.6 million pages of books, periodical, newspapers and other publications which are not held by the NDL.

At this stage, copyright clearance for the digitised materials has not yet been obtained.

In 1996 the IPA carried out an assessment study, after allowing access to 100 terminals located in libraries which participated in the Union Catalogue Network Project, content providers, project committee members and others. The report was published in March 1997. Little work has yet been conducted on search and retrieval excuse, and the system is not yet open to the general public.

NEXT GENERATION ELECTRONIC LIBRARY SYSTEM PROJECT

NACSIS-ELIS

The Electronic Library System of the National Centre for Science Information Systems (NACSIS-ELIS) is a prototype information service, which integrates an existing bibliographic database searching service (NACSIS-IR, which has been operating since 1987) with digitised scientific journals and conference papers. It operates in a distributed processing environment using a client-server model over high speed networks. An extended version of the Z39.50 protocol is employed to handle image data.

The development of the system goes back to 1980 when a three-year R&D project started to develop an online remote access to original document database. For this system called "Online Library", the technologies available at that time were such as fax terminals and optical discs. But the full scale development started in 1993 when the Information Processing Society of Japan gave permission on restricted conditions to digitise all its publications. This was followed in 1994 by the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers of Japan (IEICEJ) and the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan (IEEJ). The number of participating organisations has increased to reach 29 in March 1997, and approximately 800,000 pages from 62 journals titles have been digitised. Most of the holdings are in Japanese, though some are in English. Users conduct conventional keyword searches and images of selected papers are displayed. Alternatively the user can register the journals of his/her choice and display the cover page of the latest issue, for subsequent browsing.

The trial service started in February 1995, with the first three organisations. As of March 1997 all 29 societies are participating. The service continues to be free for 1997 while negotiations on copyright with those organisations will take place in view of starting a full-fledged service in 1998.

The NACSISI-ELIS system itself is includes facilities to keep statistical records of usage. The draft proposal on copyright clearance which NACSIS prepared for negotiation includes the following points:

Individual use

Each organisation will decide for its members taking into consideration such factors as:

• unit page charge based on display or print, with the possibility of different charge according to the types of journal, (e.g., original article journal, review journals, etc.);
• different charges for members and non-members of organisation;
• different charges for tables of contents, original articles, etc.;
• different charges according to the date of publication.

Institutional use

Each institution (library, department or faculty of university, etc.) subscribes for specific titles. The annual subscription charge for each journal will be set by its publishing organisation according to the size and nature of user institution; members of institution can use those subscribed journals free but will receive unit page charges for non-subscribed journals.

As of March 1997, 29 organisations are participating in the trial service; they are listed below.

• English Literature Society of Japan
• Japanese Society for German Literature
• Japan Society for Educational Technology
• Japan Society of Educational Information
• Art Education Association
• Japan Association of Home Economics Education
• Japanese Society of Physical Education
• Japanese Psychological Association
• Historical Society of Japan
• Japanese Society for Russian Historical Study
• Biophysical Society of Japan
• Zoological Society of Japan
• Association of Japanese Geographers
• Meteorological Society of Japan
• Japanese Association of Hydrological Sciences
• Japanese Society for Information and Systems in Education
• Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence
• Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
• Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan
• Magnetic Society of Japan
• Electronic Information and Communication Engineering Society
• Information Processing Society of Japan
• Information Science and Technology Association Japan
• Acoustical Society of Japan
• Japan Society of Corrosion Engineering
• Japan Society for Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Agrochemistry
• Japanese Forestry Society
• Japan Society of Home Economics

The service is at present free; copyright clearance is still being negotiated. It is planned to start a full service in 1998.

NARA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (NAIST) MANDALA LIBRARY

The Mandala Library is the only operational electronic university library. NAIST was founded in 1992 with three postgraduate schools in information science, biological and material sciences. In creating a digital university library, NAIST has a number of advantages over older universities, such as:

• a well developed high speed (1 Gbps) campus network called Mandala;
• buildings equipped with FDDI and Ethernet connections;
• about 1,900 computers distributed on the campus, which means practically everyone is provided with a computer
• a fairly compact institution (about 1,200 students, 150 teaching staff and 40 administrative staff);
• research-oriented user needs in STI.

Backed up with this infrastructure, the Mandala library provides services to users which are characterised by:

• 24 hour access from any computer on the campus;
• high speed access and retrieval times, e.g., average of 5 seconds access time to 400,000 bibliographic records for 20 users with same search query when 100 users are linked simultaneously;
• a variety of digitised information sources: printed books, journals, microfilms, CD-ROMs, videos;
• high quality colour image data for photographs, charts and other colour materials (400 dpi, 16,770,000 colours);
• digitised image data for display and also for creating text data for full text searching.

The Mandala Library is open also to external users. However, certain information is not available due to copyright considerations. The dissertations, research reports and other information generated by the Institute staff are in most cases available. The copyright issue has always been the greatest bottleneck in digital libraries. The NAIST set up a special Copyright Committee when the Digital Library Project started in 1992, and this committee has been making strenuous efforts to negotiate with publishers. As of July 1996, copyright has been cleared to digitise 88 journal titles and 23 books (see table 1). The digitisation of library materials is done in-house by library staff; about 100,000 pages of journals and 400 videos have been digitised by December 1996.

Table 2: Access Levels [40]

NATIONAL INFORMATION POLICY AND THE ELECTRONIC/DIGITAL LIBRARY

The recent major action of the government towards advanced information and communication society is the decision made by the cabinet in August 1994 to set up the Office for the Promotion of Advanced Information and Communication Society, which consists of cabinet members with the Prime Minister as the head of the office. It published a report in February 1995 which is entitled Basic Guidelines for the Promotion of Advanced Information and Communication Society. This report clearly states that, in accordance with the provision of the report, each government department and agency should set its own goals and plans and work out the guidelines for implementation of those plans. In the area of informatisation of science, which falls within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, the Report recommends among others to promote R&D in multimedia electronic libraries, and to further improve and strengthen NACSIS, university libraries and other organisations which play key roles in the transfer of scientific information. In view of this report, the Ministry commissioned a study of its Science Council, an advisory body to the Minister of Education, and published in August 1995 a plan for informatisation in education, science, culture and sports. The major points in this plan are:

• to promote R&D in multimedia electronic libraries at NACSIS and other organisations;
• to provide computers and other facilities to university libraries for improvement in digital information services through networks, and also to encourage them to create electronic libraries.

It should also be noted that the Basic Law of Science and Technology was promulgated and effected in November 1995, and the Basic Plan for Science and Technology issued in July 1996 makes reference to the promotion of R&D in electronic library systems and strengthening existing university libraries as electronic libraries.

Back in July 1992, the Science Council published a report on the General Plans for Promoting Scientific Research Towards the 21st century. This report defined university libraries as core on the campus for the provision of information through networks, and it stressed the need for support in developing electronic libraries. This point is further emphasised in the report of the Science Information Committee of the Science Council published in December 1993 entitled On Strengthening and Advancing University Library Functions. Nonetheless the real initiative of the Ministry for electronic libraries is found in the latest report of the same committee of the Council, which focuses exclusively on electronic university libraries. The report, entitled On Improving and Strengthening University Libraries as Electronic Libraries was published in July 1996 as a recommendation to the Minister. It stresses the need for university libraries to work out a scenario for electronic university libraries, for co-operation and co-ordination with departments and information-related facilities on the campus, and also with those outside the campus. More specific policy includes:

• digitisation of library catalogues and materials, especially copyright-free old rare materials;
• improvement in computer and network facilities.

In addition it recommends the Ministry to further support the electronic library projects of NACSIS and NAIST, and also to encourage other university libraries to start electronic library projects. The Ministry has been taking actions in line with the recommendations of the report; for example:

• provision of CD ROM server system to all university libraries, which is a 6-year programme started in 1995;
• budget allocation of ¥202 million to NAIST to further its Mandala Library System;
• appropriation of ¥59 million to the Universities of Tsukuba and Kyoto for their electronic library projects. These two universities have distinctive features which are reflected in their projects. Tsukuba University is young – it was established about 20 years ago – and is located in the Science City of Tsukuba. It is active in research in interdisciplinary and advanced science and technology fields. The project focuses on digitisation of those research results as well as dissertations and other university publications. In contrast, Kyoto university has a long history and the library holds a number of rare materials of great importance including those designated as National Treasures and as very important cultural property. The project naturally focuses on the digitisation of those rare library materials.

SUMMARY OF EXPENDITURE

The overall expenditure for these projects and initiatives is summarised in table 3.

Table 3: Government Expenditure (millions of Yen)

[39] This account was drafted for this report by The Marc Fresko Consultancy. It is based on notes taken during the presentation, slides and notes used by the speaker.

[40] Source: Scientific Monthly, Vol.50 No. 3, March 1997, p. 212.